The following article is from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979). It might be outdated or ideologically biased.

Maurois, André

(pseudonym of Émile Herzog). Born July 26, 1885, in Elbeuf; died Oct. 9, 1967, in Paris. French writer. Member of the Académie Française (1938).

Maurois served in World Wars I and II. He was the author of short stories, literary criticism, history, and memoirs. He wrote the psychological novels Bernard Quesnay (1926; Russian translation, 1926), Atmosphere of Love (1928; Russian translations, 1930 and 1966), and The Family Circle (1932; Russian translation, 1966). He gained world renown for his biographies Ariel, the Life of Shelley (1923; Russian translation, 1925); The Life of Disraeli (1927; Russian translation, 1934); Byron (1930; Russian translation, 1936); Turgenev (1931); Lélia (1952; Russian translation, 1967), about G. Sand; Olympio (1954; Russian translation, 1971), about V. Hugo; The Titans (1957; Russian translation, 1962), about the Dumas family; The Life of Sir Alexander Fleming (1959; Russian translation, 1961); and Prometheus (1965, Russian translation, 1967), about H. de Balzac.

Based on precise historical documentation, Maurois’s biographies are vivid portraits of great men. Maurois usually focused his attention on the inner world of his heroes, as well as on the circumstances of their personal lives. Maurois’s later books reveal an increased interest in public affairs, the social ethos of an age, and national literary traditions (the biographies of Sand, Hugo, Balzac). As a writer, Maurois was inspired by French and world literature. He was fond of the Russian classics and wrote about I. S. Turgenev, L. N. Tolstoy, and A. P. Chekhov. His realistic writing is imbued with faith in the human personality and runs counter to the modernist tendencies in French literature.

WORKS

Oeuvres complétes, vols. 1–16. Paris, 1950–56.
Mémoires. [Paris, 1970.]
Une Carrière et autres nouvelles. Moscow, 1965.
In Russian translation:
“Tragediia Frantsii.” A. Simon [et al.], O tekh, kto predal Frantsiiu. Moscow, 1941.
Fialki po sredam. Moscow, 1963.
Literaturnye portrety. Moscow, 1970.
“Iz ’Pisem k Neznakomke’” Introduction by E. Evnina. Inostrannaia literatura, 1974, no. 1.

REFERENCES

Istoriia frantsuzskoi literatury, vol. 4. Moscow, 1963.
Leviant, M. la. “Teoriia biograficheskogo romana André Morua.” Uch. zap. Mosk. gos. pedagogich. in-ta im. V, I. Lenina, vol. 458. Moscow, 1971.
Narkir’er, F. S. André Morua. Moscow, 1974. (In press.)
Michel-Droit. André Maurois, 2nd ed. Paris, 1958.
Suffel, J. André Maurois. With commentary by André Maurois. [Paris, 1963.]
Biblio, 1965, no. 6. (Special issue on Maurois.)
Keating, L. C. André Maurois. New York [1969].

F. S. NARKIR’ER

References in periodicals archive

Land of a Million Wishes: Andre Maurois, The Land of a Million Wishes, 1928

Preposterous precincts

"In literature as in love, we are astonished at what is chosen by others" - Andre Maurois, novelist and biographer.

Read all about it

Andre Maurois's Ariel, with a purple and white cover and a penguin logo, was the first title.

Alan Powers. Front Cover: Great Book Jacket and Cover Design

(2.) Andre Maurois, Byron (London: Jonathan Cape, 1930); Leslie Alexis Marchand, Byron: A Biography (London: John Murray, 1957); Leslie Alexis Marchand, ed., Byron's Letters and Journals, 12 vol.

Byron's Passovers and Nathan's melodies

His real name was Antonio Francisco Lisboa; he was called the "sublime little one" by Mario de Andrade and "the mulatto El Greco" by Andre Maurois. Aleijadinho was the most prominent artist of his day, and his works grace most of the churches of the cities of gold.

THE GLITTER of BRAZIL'S BAROQUE BOOM

Smith says an actor friend introduced him to the Dumas family saga a few years ago via Titans, an English translation of the biography Les Trois Dumas by Andre Maurois. "I just fell into this man's life, which was so large and so oversized - I was enchanted by it all," he reveals.

Les Trois Dumas

Andre Maurois, the biographer of Shelley and Disraeli, was sent with his wife to New York on a priority passage to help with this propaganda work but Godfrey Haggard, Britain's Consul General in New York, soon reported, 'The Maurois, especially she, are very anxious to get back to France .

European writers in the Public Record Office

The alliance with Britain was to be stressed not only with English lessons but also in talks on English subjects by authors such as Andre Maurois and Andre Gide, while Paul Valery, Francois Mauriac, Pierre Benoit, and others were to discuss various aesthetic problems involved in the creation of a work of art.

Georges Duhamel: enemy-cum-friend of the radio

Meanwhile, if these critics seem arbitrarily included, the tradition of French biographical criticism, especially as represented by Andre Maurois, seems arbitrarily excluded.

A History of Modern Criticism: 1750-1950, vol. 8, French, Italian, and Spanish Criticism, 1900-1950

| 1935: Ariel, The Life Of Shelley, by Andre Maurois, was the first Penguin paperback book to be published, priced sixpence.

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