French male essayists

Georges Goyau (31 May 1869 – 25 October 1939) was a French historian and essayist specializing in religious history.

Philippe Delerm (born November 27, 1950, in Auvers-sur-Oise, Val-d'Oise, France) is a French writer whose collection of essays La Première gorgée de bière et autres plaisirs minuscules sold more than one million copies in France.

Louis Gustave Fortuné Ratisbonne (29 July 1827 – 24 September 1900) was a French man of letters.
He was born at Strasbourg. He was the son of the banker Adolphe Ratisbonne and his wife Charlotte Oppenheim (daughter of Salomon Oppenheim), and the nephew of the priests Marie Theodor Ratisbonne and Marie-Alphonse Ratisbonne. He studied at the school of his native town and at the College Henry IV in Paris. He was connected with the Journal des Debats from 1853 to 1876; became librarian of the palace of Fontainebleau in 1871, and three years later to the Senate.
Louis Ratisbonne's most important work was a verse translation of the La Divina Commedia (The Divine Comedy), in which the original is rendered tercet by tercet into French. L'Enfer (1852) was crowned by the Academy; Le Purgatoire (1857) and Le Paradis 1859) received the prix Bordin.
He is also the author of some charming fables and verses for children: La Comédie enfantine (1860), Les Figures jeunes (1865) and others. He was literary executor of Alfred de Vigny, whose Destinées (1864) and Journal d'un poète (1867) he published. Ratisbonne died in Paris.

Through the influence of Thiers, Ratisbonne was appointed librarian at Fontainbleau, where he succeeded Octave Feuillet, and later he was transferred to the Palais du Luxembourg.

Gaëtan Picon (19 September 1915 – 6 August 1976) was a French author: essayist, art and literature critic, and art and literature historian. He was director of the Mercure de France and Director-General of Arts and Letters under André Malraux. He wrote an entry for the Encyclopaedia Universalis on Swiss publisher Albert Skira.

Michel de Certeau (French: [sɛʁto]; 17 May 1925 – 9 January 1986) was a French Jesuit priest and scholar whose work combined history, psychoanalysis, philosophy, and the social sciences as well as hermeneutics, semiotics, ethnology, and religion. He was known as a philosopher of everyday life and widely regarded as a historian who had interests ranging from travelogues of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries to contemporary urban life.A multidisciplinarian, he wrote ground-breaking studies in fields as diverse as mysticism, the act of faith, cultural dynamics in contemporary society, and historiography as an intellectual practice. His impact continues unabated, with new volumes appearing regularly, and perhaps surprisingly his reputation is growing even more rapidly in English and German-speaking countries and the Mediterranean than in his native France. This strong and growing interest in academia is not matched in the public sphere; however, partly due to his being considered a "difficult" author because of his highly personal style which makes translation difficult, and partly due to the declining status of French in the world generally. Nevertheless, portions of his prolific output have been translated into a dozen languages.

Antoine Gustave Droz (9 June 1832 – 22 October 1895), author, French man of letters and son of the sculptor Jules-Antoine Droz (1807–1872), was born in Paris.He was educated as an artist, and began to exhibit his work in Paris at the Salon of 1857. A series of sketch stories dealing gaily with the intimacies of family life, published in the magazine La Vie Parisienne and issued in book form as Monsieur, Madame et Bébé (1866), won for the author an immediate and great success. The publication Entre Nous (1867) was similar, and was followed by some psychological novels: Le Cahier Bleu de Mlle Cibot (1868); Autour d'une Source (1869); Un Paquet de Lettres (1870); Babolain (1872); Les Étangs (1875); Une Femme Gênante (1875); and L'Enfant (1885). His Tristesses et Sourires (1884) is a delicate analysis of the niceties of family intercourse and its difficulties. Droz's first book was translated into English with the title Papa, Mamma and Baby (1887)."Gustave Droz saw love within marriage as the key to human happiness..." "He urged women to follow their hearts and marry a man nearly their own age."

A husband who is stately and a little bald is all right, but a young husband who loves you and drinks out of your glass without ceremony is better. Let him, if he ruffles your dress a little and places a kiss on your neck as he passes. Let him, if he undresses you after the ball, laughing like a fool. You have fine spiritual qualities, it is true, but your little body is not bad either and when one loves, one loves completely. Behind these follies lies happiness Quoted in T. Zeldin, France 1848–1945, vol. 1 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973), p. 295.

Jacques Rivière (15 July 1886 – 14 February 1925) was a French "man of letters" — a writer, critic and editor who was "a major force in the intellectual life of France in the period immediately following World War I". He edited the magazine La Nouvelle Revue Française (NRF) from 1919 until his death. He was influential in winning a general public acceptance of Marcel Proust as an important writer. His friend and brother-in-law was Alain-Fournier (Henri Alban-Fournier), with whom he exchanged an abundant correspondence.

Louis Leprince-Ringuet (27 March 1901, in Alès – 23 December 2000, in Paris) was a French physicist, telecommunications engineer, essayist and historian of science.Leprince-Ringuet advocated strongly for the creation of the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) and remained its indefatigable supporter. He was vice chair (1956–69) and chair (1964–66) of CERN’s scientific policy committee. He was elected to the American Philosophical Society.He is known for early discovery of the kaon. He also coined the term hyperon in 1953.

Guy Gilbert (born 12 September 1935) is a French Roman Catholic priest and educator.

Emmanuel Berl (2 August 1892 – 21 September 1976) was a French journalist, historian and essayist. He was born at Le Vésinet in the modern département of Yvelines, and is buried in the Montparnasse Cemetery, Paris. In 1937 he married the singer, composer and film actress Mireille Hartuch; she had nicknamed him "Théodore" (which is what appears on their tomb). Berl was the cousin of Lisette de Brinon.