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André Maurois

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André Maurois (born Émile Salomon Wilhelm Herzog; 26 July 1885 – 9 October 1967) was a French author.

Contents

• 1 Biography
• 2 Family
• 3 Quotations
• 4 Bibliography
• 5 References
• 6 External links

Biography

Maurois was born on 26 July 1885 in Elbeuf and educated at the Lycée Pierre Corneille in Rouen,^[1] both in Normandy. Maurois was the son of Ernest Herzog, a Jewish textile manufacturer, and his wife Alice Lévy-Rueff. His family had fled Alsace after the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–71 and took refuge in Elbeuf, where they owned a woollen mill.^[2]
During World War I he joined the French army and served as an interpreter and later a liaison officer with the British army. His first novel, Les silences du colonel Bramble, was a witty and socially realistic account of that experience. It was an immediate success in France. It was translated and became popular in the United Kingdom and other English-speaking countries as The Silence of Colonel Bramble. Many of his other works have also been translated into English,^[3] as they often dealt with British people or topics, such as his biographies of Disraeli, Byron, and Shelley.
In 1938 Maurois was elected to the prestigious Académie française. He was encouraged and assisted in seeking this post by Marshal Philippe Pétain, and he made a point of acknowledging with thanks his debt to Pétain in his 1941 autobiography, "Call no man happy" – though by the time of writing their paths had sharply diverged, Pétain having become Head of State of Vichy France.
When World War II began, he was appointed the French Official Observer attached to the British General Headquarters. In this capacity he accompanied the British Army to Belgium. He knew personally the main politicians in the French Government, and on 10 June 1940 he was sent on a mission to London. The Armistice ended that mission. Maurois was demobilised and travelled from England to Canada. He wrote of these experiences in his book, Tragedy in France.^[4]
Later in World War II he served in the French army and the Free French Forces.
His Maurois pseudonym became his legal name in 1947.
He died in 1967 in Neuilly-sur-Seine after a long career as an author of novels, biographies, histories, children's books and science fiction stories. He is buried in Neuilly-sur-Seine community cemetery near Paris.

Family

Maurois's first wife was Jeanne-Marie Wanda de Szymkiewicz, a young Polish-Russian aristocrat who had studied at Oxford University. She had a nervous breakdown in 1918 and in 1924 she died of septicemia. After the death of his father, Maurois gave up the family business of textile manufacturing.
Maurois's second wife was Simone de Caillavet, the granddaughter of Anatole France's mistress Léontine Arman de Caillavet. After Germany occupied France the couple moved to the United States to help with propaganda work against the Nazis.^[2]

Quotations

• "A happy marriage is a long conversation which always seems too short."
• "Often we allow ourselves to be upset by small things we should despise and forget. We lose many irreplaceable hours brooding over grievances that, in a year’s time, will be forgotten by us and by everybody. No, let us devote our life to worthwhile actions and feelings, to great thoughts, real affections and enduring undertakings."
• "We appreciate frankness from those who like us. Frankness from others is called insolence."
• "In literature as in love, we are astonished at what is chosen by others."
• "Business is a combination of war and sport."
• "The minds of different generations are as impenetrable one by the other as are the monads of Leibniz." (from Ariel, 1923).
• "Who in Europe, or America, for that matter, knows that Kansas City is one of the loveliest cities on earth? And yet it is true."
• "Without a family, man, alone in the world, trembles with the cold."^[5][6]

Bibliography

• Climats
• Lelia, ou la vie de George Sand (Lelia, or the life of George Sand)
• Histoire d'Angleterre (History of England)
• Si-- (translation of Kipling's If--, 1918)
• Aspects of Biography (1929)
• Patapoufs et Filifers (Fattypuffs and Thinifers) (1930)
• The Next Chapter: The War Against the Moon (1928)
• Ariel (a biography of Shelley) (1924)
• Byron (first published in hardback by Cape in 1930)
• Captains and Kings
• Disraeli
• Mape
• Lyautey (1931)
• The Edwardian Era (1933)
• The Silence of Colonel Bramble
• Kipling and His Works from a French Point of View (The Kipling Society, 1934; republished in "Rudyard Kipling: The Critical Heritage", ed. RL Green, 1971 & 1997)
• Dickens
• Prophets and Poets
• The Thought Reading Machine
• Ricochets
• The Miracle of England
• Chateaubriand
• The Art of Living
• Tragedy in France (1940) (trans. Denver Lindley; Harper & Brothers)
• I Remember, I Remember
• The Miracle of America
• Why France Fell (1941)
• Les Origines de la Guerre de 1939
• Woman Without Love
• My American Journal
• Olympio: The Turbulent Life of Victor Hugo
• To an Unknown Lady
• Prometheus: The Life of Balzac
• Cecil Rhodes
• The Life of Sir Alexander Fleming: Discoverer of Penicillin
• Adrienne, ou, La vie de Mme de La Fayette
• The World of Marcel Proust
• Titans: A Three-Generation Biography of the Dumas
• Call no man happy: Autobiography (originally published 1941; The Reprint Society, 1944.)
• From My Journal (English, translated by Joan Charles; Harper & Brothers, 1947.)
• The Art of Writing (tr. G. Hopkins, 1960)
• Points of view from Kipling to Graham Greene (English, 1969)
• Memoirs 1885-1967 (English, translated by Denver Lindley; Harper & Row, 1970.)
• The Collected Short Stories of André Maurois (English, translated by Adrienne Foulke)

An Imaginary Interview

Reality Transposed

Darling, Good Evening!

Lord of the Shadows

Ariane, My Sister...

Home Port

Myrrhine

Biography

Thanatos Palace Hotel

Friends

Dinner Under the Chestnut Trees

Bodies and Souls

The Curse of Gold

For Piano Alone

The Departure

The Fault of M. Balzac

Love in Exile

Wednesday's Violets

A Career

Ten Year Later

Tidal Wave

Transference

Flowers in Season

The Will

The Campaign

The Life of Man

The Corinthian Porch

The Cathedral

The Ants

The Postcard

Poor Maman

The Green Belt

The Neuilly Fair

The Birth of a Master

Black Masks

Irène

The Letters

The Cuckoo

The House