René Bazin

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René François Nicolas Marie Bazin (December 26, 1853 – July 20, 1932) was a French novelist.

Born at Angers, he studied law in Paris, and on his return to Angers became professor of law in the Catholic university there. He contributed to Parisian journals a series of sketches of provincial life and descriptions of travel, and wrote Stephanette (1884), but he made his reputation with Une tache d'encre (A spot of ink) (1888), which received a prize from the Academy.

Other novels of great charm and delicacy followed:

Les Noellet (1890)
La Sarcelle bleue (1892)
Madame Corentine (1893)
Humble Amour (1894)
De toute son âme (1897)
La Terre qui meurt (1899)
Les Oberlé (1901), an Alsatian story which was dramatized and acted in the following year
L'Âme alsacienne (1903)
Donatienne (1903)
L'Isolée (1905)
Le blé qui lève (1907)
Mémoires d'une vieille fille (1908).
Mémoires d'une Vieille Fille; L'Abandonné (1914)
La Closerie de Champsdolent (1917)
Récits du Temps de Guerre (1919)
Le Mariage de Mlle. Gimel; La Barriére; La Douce France; Histoire de Vingiquatre Sonnettes; and Ferdinand Jacques Hervé Bazin (1921)
Charles de Foucauld, Explorateur (1921)

La Terre qui meurt, a picture of the decay of peasant farming and a story of La Vendée, was an indirect plea for the development of provincial France. A volume of Questions littéraires et sociales appeared in 1906. He also wrote books of travel, including a l'aventure (1891), Sicile (1892), Terre d'Espagne (1896), and Croquis de France et d'Orient (1901). The book by which Bazin is best known to English and American readers is that on the Italy of his time, rendered into English under the title The Italians of To-Day (1904).[1] After 1914 he produced a half dozen novels besides miscellaneous writings.[2] Les Nouveaux Oberlé (1919) is regarded as a masterpiece.[3] René Bazin was admitted to the Académie française on April 28, 1904.