A

• Marcel Achard
• Alain-Fournier
• Jean Anouilh — 20th century dramatist
• Guillaume Apollinaire
• Louis Aragon
• Antonin Artaud
• Marcel Aymé

B

• Honoré de Balzac — realist author
• Henri Barbusse
• Charles Baudelaire, 19th century poet
• Pierre Beaumarchais, comedy playwright
• Simone de Beauvoir — 20th century author
• Cyrano de Bergerac
• Georges Bernanos
• Tristan Bernard
• Maurice Blanchot
• Antoine Blondin
• Nicolas Boileau
• Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet
• Pierre Boulle
• Fernand Braudel
• André Breton
• Restif de la Bretonne
• Jean-Anthelme Brillat-Savarin
• Michel Butor

C-E

• Albert Camus — existentialist author
• Louis-Ferdinand Céline — 20th century author
• Blaise Cendrars
• Aimé Césaire– 20th century author
• Nicolas Chamfort
• René Char, 20th century poet
• François-René de Chateaubriand
• Pierre Choderlos de Laclos
• Emil Cioran
• Paul Claudel
• Jean Cocteau — 20th century poet and playwright
• Colette– 20th century author
• Benjamin Constant
• Tristan Corbière
• Pierre Corneille — classicist playwright
• Darry Cowl
• Marquis de Custine — travel writer
• Robert Desnos — 20th century poet
• Denis Diderot
• Alexandre Dumas, père, Author
• Alexandre Dumas, fils — Playwright/author
• Marguerite Duras – 20th century novelist
• Vanessa Duriès
• Paul Éluard

F-J

• René Fallet — 20th century author
• Frantz Fanon — 20th century author, psychiatrist
• Léon-Paul Fargue
• Georges Feydeau
• Marc Ferro
• Amanda Filipacchi — novelist (French and U.S. citizenship, writes in English)
• Alain Finkielkraut – essayist
• Gustave Flaubert — realist author
• Anatole France
• Marie de France — poet
• Romain Gary
• Jean Genet
• André Gide, Nobel Prize Winner
• Jean Giono
• Jean Giraudoux
• Françoise Giroud
• Julien Gracq
• Julien Green
• Pierre Guyotat
• Jean-Edern Hallier
• Auguste Himly, historian
• Victor Hugo — novelist, poet, and playwright
• Joris-Karl Huysmans
• Eugène Ionesco
• Jules-Gabriel Janin — author and theatre critic
• Alain Jouffroy — poet, art critic, plastician

L

• Jean de La Bruyère
• Jean de La Fontaine
• Pierre Choderlos de Laclos
• Comte de Lautréamont (Isidore Ducasse)
• Leconte de Lisle — parnassian poet
• Alphonse de Lamartine
• Jacques Lacan – psychoanalyst
• Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie – historian
• Paul Lafargue
• Jules Laforgue
• Valéry Larbaud
• Maurice Leblanc, created Arsène Lupin
• Gaston Leroux- journalist and author, credited with creating the locked room puzzle mystery novel Le Mystère de la chambre jaune (The Mystery of the Yellow Room) and author of Le Fantôme de l’Opéra (The Phantom of the Opera)

M-O

• Stéphane Mallarmé — poet
• Hector Malot — 19th century author
• André Malraux
• Matthieu Marais — 18th century lawyer and writer
• Marcel Marceau — 20th century mime (and member of the French Resistance in World War II)
• Pierre de Marivaux – playwright
• Clément Marot — poet
• Guy de Maupassant novelist
• François Mauriac – Roman Catholic writer
• Prosper Mérimée – 19th century novelist
• Catherine Millet – art expert, editor and erotic memoirist
• Patrick Modiano
• Jean Baptiste Poquelin dit Molière — 17th century comedic playwright and actor
• Alfred de Musset — 19th century poet
• Gérard de Nerval
• Anaïs Nin
• Michel Ohl– 20th century poet and novelist

P-R

• Marcel Pagnol
• Charles Péguy — 20th century poet
• Charles Perrault — Mother Goose Tales
• Georges Perec
• Saint-John Perse
• Roger Peyrefitte
• Jean Piaget – psychologist
• Christine de Pizan, historian, poet, philosopher
• Jacques Prévert — 20th century poet
• Abbé Prévost
• Marcel Prevost
• Marcel Proust — novelist
• Raymond Queneau
• François Rabelais — Renaissance writer
• Raymond Radiguet
• Jean Racine — classicist playwright
• Pauline Réage, novelist
• Arthur Rimbaud — symbolist poet
• Alain Robbe-Grillet
• Pierre de Ronsard
• Edmond Rostand — neo-romantic playwright
• Raymond Roussel
• Maximilien Rubel

S-Z

• Marquis de Sade — erotic and philosophic author
• Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve
• George Sand — feminist author
• Jean Paul Sartre — 20th century existentialist philosopher
• Nathalie Sarraute
• Pierre Seel, homosexual survivor of the concentration camps, activist, author
• Victor Segalen
• Madame de Sévigné
• Madame de Staël
• Antoine de Saint-Exupery, author and aviator.
• Claude Simon
• Stendhal — novelist (born Henry Beyle)
• François Truffaut — 20th century filmmaker
• Paul Valéry — 20th century poet
• Vercors
• Paul Verlaine — symbolist poet
• Jules Verne — novelist
• Boris Vian — 20th century author
• Alfred de Vigny — 19th century poet
• Auguste Villiers de l’Isle-Adam
• François Villon
• Voltaire
• Marguerite Yourcenar
• Émile Zola — naturalist author

Montaigne* :

Michel Eyquem de Montaigne (1533 – 1592) was one of the most influential writers of the French Renaissance. He became famous for his massive volume Essais (translated literally as “Attempts”). Montaigne had a direct influence on writers all over the world, including René Descartes, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Stefan Zweig, Friedrich Nietzsche, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Isaac Asimov, and perhaps William Shakespeare (see section “Related Writers and Influence” below).

He is considered the father of the ‘anti-conformist’ tradition in French literature.

He is most famously known for his sceptical remark, ‘Que sais-je?’ (‘What do I know?’).

Remarkably modern even to readers today, Montaigne’s attempt to examine the world through the lens of the only thing he can depend on implicitly — his own judgment — makes him more accessible to modern readers than any other author of the Renaissance. Much of modern literary non-fiction has found inspiration in Montaigne, and writers of all kinds continue to read him for his knowledge and personal story-telling.

Corneille* :

Pierre Corneille (1606 – 1684) is one of France’s most outstanding playwrights of the seventeenth century.

Born on June 6, 1606, in Rouen, France, in a family that had a tradition of producing lawyers, Corneille was destined to have the same job as his father. He studied law and, at the early age of twenty-three, entered parliament. For the next twenty-one years, Corneille practiced law (under King Louis XIII and King Louis XIV) as the king’s counselor. But law was not the only thing that interested Corneille. No sooner he worked at the parliament, he decided to try writing and discovered he had another fruitful talent : theatre.

Corneille’s first six plays were comedies, beginning with Mélite (1625). After that, Corneille wrote almost a play a year, eventually catching the attention of Cardinal de Richelieu (prime minister of France, 1585 – 1642). The cardinal, a very influential figure in the king’s court, wanted to use Corneille’sto promote his political ideas. So Corneille was sponsored by the cardinal. This did not set well with Corneille for very long. After many disagreements, Corneille and the cardinal parted company. Corneille left Paris and returned to his hometown of Rouen, where he took up a private practice in law.

Corneille’s first tragic piece was Médée (1634), which met with only mediocre success. Corneille next produced what many critics believe was his first masterpiece, Le Cid (1636). Even King Louis XIII sent Corneille congratulations. But everybody was not happy with Corneille’s play. Cardinal de Richelieu criticized Le Cid because it broke away from the traditional classical rules of drama.

But this was not the end of Corneille. The year 1641 was a remarkable time for Corneille. First, he married Marie de Lampérière. Next, he enjoyed back-to-back productions of two more well-received tragic plays, Horace (1640) and Cinna (1641). With these plays, there was no doubt of Corneille’s talents. He would go on to write many more plays before his death and for his innovations in the writing of dramatic tragedy, he is honored, today, with the title of the Father of French Tragedy.

Corneille died in Paris on October 1, 1684.

Voltaire* :

François-Marie Arouet (1694 – 1778), better known by the pen name Voltaire, was a French Enlightenment writer, essayist, and philosopher known for his philosophical sport and defence of civil liberties, including both freedom of religion and free trade.

Voltaire was a prolific writer and produced works in almost every literary form, authoring plays, poetry, novels, essays, historical and scientific works, more than 20,000 letters and more than 2,000 books and pamphlets.

He was an outspoken supporter of social reform, despite strict censorship laws and harsh penalties for those who broke them. A satirical polemicist, he frequently made use of his works to criticize Catholic Church and the French institutions of his day.

Voltaire was one of several Enlightenment figures (along with Montesquieu, John Locke, Thomas Hobbes and Jean-Jacques Rousseau) whose works and ideas influenced important thinkers of both the American and French Revolutions.

Honoré de Balzac* :

Honoré de Balzac (1799 – 1850) was a French novelist and playwright. His magnum opus was a sequence of almost 100 novels and plays collectively entitled La Comédie humaine, which presents a panorama of French life in the years after the fall of Napoléon Bonaparte in 1815.

Balzac is regarded as one of the founders of realism in European literature. He is known for his multi-faceted characters; even his lesser characters are complex, morally ambiguous and fully human. The city of Paris, a backdrop for much of his writing, takes on many human qualities. His writing influenced many famous authors, including the novelists Marcel Proust, Émile Zola, Charles Dickens, Gustave Flaubert, Marie Corelli, Henry James, Jack Kerouac, and Italo Calvino as well as important philosophers such as Friedrich Engels. Many of Balzac’s works have been made into films, and they continue to inspire other writers.

An enthusiastic reader and independent thinker as a child, Balzac had trouble adapting himself to the teaching style of his grammar school. His willful nature caused trouble throughout his life, and frustrated his ambitions to succeed in the world of business. When he finished school, Balzac was apprenticed as a legal clerk, but he turned his back on law after wearying of its inhumanity and banal routine. Before and during his career as a writer, he attempted to be a publisher, printer, businessman, critic, and politician. He failed in all of these efforts. La Comédie Humaine reflects his real-life difficulties, and includes scenes from his own experience.

Balzac suffered from health problems throughout his life, possibly due to his intense writing schedule. His relationship with his family was often strained by financial and personal drama, and he lost more than one friend over critical reviews. In 1850, he married Ewelina Hańska, his longtime love; he died five months later.

Albert Camus* :

Albert Camus (1913 – 1960) was a French Algerian author, philosopher, and journalist who was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1957. He is often associated with existentialism, but Camus refused this label. On the other hand, as he wrote in his essay The Rebel, his whole life was devoted to opposing the philosophy of nihilism while still delving deeply into individual freedom.

In 1949, Camus founded the Group for International Liaisons, in the Revolutionary Union Movement, according to the book Albert Camus, une vie by Olivier Todd, a group opposed to some tendencies of the surrealistic movement of André Breton. Camus was the second-youngest recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature (after Rudyard Kipling) when he became the first Africa-born writer to receive the award, in 1957.He is also the shortest-lived of any literature laureate to date, having died in an automobile accident only three years after receiving the award.

In an interview in 1945, Camus rejected any ideological associations: “No, I am not an existentialist. Sartre and I are always surprised to see our names linked…”

At the beginning in the 11th century, literature written in Medieval French was one of the oldest vernacular (non-Latin) literatures in Europe and it became a key source of literary themes in the Middle Age across the continent.

16^th century :

- Come back to the Ancient Texts (Greek, Latin, Hebrew)

- Wish of knowledge

Ronsard, Du Bellay, Rabelais, Marguerite De Navarre, Montaigne*

17^th century :

- Two big literary movements appeared : the baroque literature and  classicism.

- French literature has dominated European letters this century.

Corneille*, Jean Racine, Molière, La Fontaine, Mme De Sévigné, La Bruyère

18^th century :

- The Enlightenment century

- French epistolary style, through a tradition of correspondence,had a deep impact on all European and American literary traditions.

Voltaire*, Rousseau, Diderot, Montesquieu

19^th century :

- The romanticism and naturalism movements

Victor Hugo, Honoré de Balzac*, Chateaubriand, Gustave Flaubert, Emile Zola

20^th century :

- The surrealism and existentialism movements

André Breton, Robert Desnos, Albert Camus*, Jean-Paul Sartre

Today, French schools emphasize the study of novels, theatre and poetry (often learnt by heart). The literary arts are heavily sponsored by the state. The Académie Française and the Institut de France are important linguistic and artistic institutions in France, and French television features shows about writers and poets.

As in 2008, French literary people have been awarded more Nobel Prizes in Literature than novelists, poets and essayists of any other country.

Some french famous authors\’ biography

All french famous authors

French Nobel Prize in Literature winners:

The following French or French language authors have won a Nobel Prize in Literature:

• 1901 – Sully Prudhomme (The first Nobel Prize in literature)
• 1904 – Frédéric Mistral (wrote in Occitan)
• 1915 – Romain Rolland
• 1921 – Anatole France
• 1927 – Henri Bergson
• 1937 – Roger Martin du Gard
• 1947 – André Gide
• 1952 – François Mauriac
• 1957 – Albert Camus
• 1960 – Saint-John Perse
• 1964 – Jean-Paul Sartre (declined the prize)
• 1985 – Claude Simon
• 2000 : Gao Xingjian, born in China (wrote in mandarin and in French)
• 2008 – J.M.G. Le Clézio

French Literary Awards :

• Grand Prix de Littérature Policière – created in 1948, for crime and detective fiction.
• Grand Prix du roman de l’Académie française – created 1918.
• Prix Décembre – created in 1989.
• Prix Femina – created 1904, awarded every year by an exclusively female jury, the authors who take part cannot be men.
• Prix Goncourt – created 1903, given to the author of “the best and most imaginative prose work of the year”.
• Prix Goncourt des Lycéens – created in 1987.
• Prix Littéraire Valery Larbaud – created in 1957.
• Prix Médicis – created 1958.
• Prix Renaudot – created in 1926.
• Prix Tour-Apollo Award – 1972-1990, given to the best science fiction novel published in French during the preceding year.
• Prix des Deux Magots – created in 1933.