Jean Giraudoux

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Hippolyte Jean Giraudoux (October 29, 1882 – January 31, 1944) was a French dramatist who wrote internationally acclaimed plays.

[edit] Biography

He was born in Bellac, Haute-Vienne. His father, Léger Giraudoux, worked for the Ministry of Transportation.

Giraudoux studied at the Lycée Lakanal, in Paris, where he demonstrated himself to be a brilliant scholar.

Giraudoux was also a prose writer and served France as a diplomat and government official. In his youth he traveled abroad, visiting Italy, the Balkans, Canada, and Germany, where he developed a passion for German culture and literature. He also spent a year (1906-07) in the United States, as an instructor at Harvard University.

Returning to France, he served in World War I, was twice wounded (first at Alsace and later in the Dardanelles) , and in 1915 he became the first writer ever to be awarded the wartime Legion of Honor.

He was married in 1918, and in the subsequent period between the two World Wars Giraudoux produced the majority of his writing. He first achieved literary success through several of his novels, notably Siegfried et le Limousin (1922) and Eglantine (1927), but it is his plays that gained him international renown. A meeting with Louis Jouvet, in 1928, stimulated his writing.

Before World War II he published in 1939 a highly antisemitic political essay called "Pleins pouvoirs" (Full power).

At the start of the war he served as Minister of Information under Premier Édouard Daladier, but retired in January 1941.

He is buried in the Cimetière de Passy in Paris.