Clovis Hugues (November 3, 1851 – June 11, 1907) was a French poet, journalist, dramatist, novelist, and socialist activist. He wrote some of his works in Provençal and un 1898 was elected a majoral of the Félibrige, a society for the promotion of the Occitan language and culture.
Georges Courteline born Georges Victor Marcel Moinaux (25 June 1858 – 25 June 1929) was a French dramatist and novelist, a satirist notable for his sharp wit and cynical humor.
Émile Bergerat (29 April 1845 – 13 October 1923) was a French poet, playwright and essayist. He used the pseudonyms l'Homme masqué (the masked man), Caliban and Ariel (the latter two drawn from The Tempest by William Shakespeare). A library in Neuilly-sur-Seine opposite his flat bears his name.
Pierre-Jules Renard (pronounced [pjɛʁ ʒyl ʁənaʁ]; 22 February 1864 – 22 May 1910) was a French author and member of the Académie Goncourt, most famous for the works Poil de carotte (Carrot Top, 1894) and Les Histoires Naturelles (Nature Stories, 1896). Among his other works are Le Plaisir de rompre (The Pleasure of Breaking, 1898) and the posthumously published Huit Jours à la campagne (A Week in the Country, 1912).
Émile Fabre (24 March 1869 in Metz, France – 25 September 1955 in Paris) was a French playwright and general administrator of the Comédie-Française from 1915 to
1936.:227 He was greatly influenced by Balzac as a young man, and most of his best-known plays deal with the sacrifice of personal happiness to the pursuit of wealth. He also wrote the libretto for Xavier Leroux's opera Les cadeaux de Noël (The Christmas Gifts) which was a great success when it premiered in Paris in 1915.
Félix-Henri "Henry" Bataille (4 April 1872, in Nîmes – 2 March 1922, in Rueil-Malmaison) was a French dramatist and poet. His works were popular between 1900 and the start of World War I.
Bataille's parents died when he was young. He attended the École des Beaux-Arts and Académie Julian to study painting, but started writing when he was 14. Henry wrote plays and poems, but after the success of his second play, La Lépreuse, he became a playwright exclusively. Bataille's early works explored the effects of passion on human motivation and how stifling the social conventions of the times could be. For example, Maman Colibri, is about a middle-aged woman's affair with a younger man. Later, Bataille would gravitate towards the theatre of ideas and social drama.
Bataille was also a theorist of subconscious motivation. While he did not use his theories in most of his own works, he influenced later playwrights such as Jean-Jacques Bernard and the "school of silence".
Alexandre Bisson (9 April 1848 – 27 January 1912) was a French playwright, vaudeville creator, and novelist. Born in Briouze, Orne in Lower Normandy, he was successful in his native France as well as in the United States. Remembered as a significant creator of Parisian vaudeville, in collaboration with Edmond Gondinet, Bisson's 1881 three-act comedy Un Voyage d'agrément was performed at the Théâtre du Vaudeville in Paris.Of his works, Bisson is best remembered for his play Madame X, which was performed in 1910 both in Paris and on Broadway with Sarah Bernhardt in the leading role. Over the years, the play would be revived for Broadway three times and nine Madame X motion pictures in several languages have been filmed. The first silent screen adaptation was in 1916 and the latest was in 2000. Better-known versions include a 1929 sound film starring Ruth Chatterton and directed by Lionel Barrymore plus the 1966 film starring Lana Turner. In 2006, a musical based on the original play was produced in Chicago.
Bisson also adapted the 1910 best-selling Florence Barclay novel, The Rosary as a three-act play for the Paris stage. Widely acclaimed in the United States, Bisson was invited to write about the theatre by The Saturday Evening Post and his articles "The Dilemmas of the Theater" and "How the World Contributes to the American Stage" were published in 1912.
Bisson died in Paris in 1912 at the age of 63.
Catulle Mendès (22 May 1841 – 8 February 1909) was a French poet and man of letters.
Henri, vicomte de Bornier (French pronunciation: [ɑ̃ʁi də bɔʁnje]; 25 December 1825, Lunel – 28 January 1901, Paris) was a French poet and dramatist.
Alfred Victor, Comte de Vigny (27 March 1797 – 17 September 1863) was a French poet and early French Romanticist. He also produced novels, plays, and translations of Shakespeare.