READ Famous Poets from France

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Adam de la Halle Adam de la Halle, also known as Adam le Bossu was a French-born trouvère, poet and musician, whose literary and musical works include chansons and jeux-partis in the style of the ...more

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Adélaïde Dufrénoy Died at 60 (1765-1825) Adélaïde-Gillette Dufrénoy was a French poet and painter from Brittany. The daughter of Jacques Billet, a jeweller for the Crown of Poland, she had a lavish education and ...more

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Aimé Césaire Died at 95 (1913-2008) Aimé Fernand David Césaire was a Francophone and French poet, author and politician from Martinique. He was "one of the founders of the négritude movement in ...more

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Alexandre Soumet Died at 57 (1788-1845) Alexandre Soumet was a French poet.

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Alfred de Musset Died at 47 (1810-1857) Alfred Louis Charles de Musset-Pathay was a French dramatist, poet, and novelist. Along with his poetry, he is known for writing La Confession d'un enfant du siècle from 1836.

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Alphonse Daudet Died at 57 (1840-1897) Alphonse Daudet was a French novelist. He was the father of writers Léon Daudet and Lucien Daudet.

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Alphonse de Lamartine Died at 79 (1790-1869) Alphonse Marie Louis de Prat de Lamartine, chevalier de Pratz, was a French writer, poet and politician who was instrumental in the foundation of the Second Republic and the continuation of the ...more

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Anatole France Died at 80 (1844-1924) Anatole France was a French poet, journalist, and novelist. He was born in Paris, and died in Saint-Cyr-sur-Loire. He was a successful novelist, with several best-sellers. Ironic and skeptical, ...more

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André Breton Died at 70 (1896-1966) André Breton was a French writer and poet. He is known best as the founder of Surrealism. His writings include the first Surrealist Manifesto of 1924, in which he defined surrealism as ...more

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André Frénaud Died at 86 (1907-1993) First known for his war-time poems written from a German labour camp - notably his sombre reworkings of the myth of the Magi - André Frénaud is one of the most searching of French ...more

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Anna de Noailles Died at 57 (1876-1933) Anna, Comtesse Mathieu de Noailles was a Romanian-French writer.

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Antoine de Saint-Exupéry Died at 44 (1900-1944) Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, officially Antoine Marie Jean-Baptiste Roger, comte de Saint Exupéry was a French aristocrat, writer, poet, and pioneering aviator. He became a laureate ...more

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Armand Gatti age 94 Armand Gatti is a French playwright, poet, journalist, screenwriter, filmmaker and former WW II resistance fighter. His debut film Enclosure was entered into the 2nd Moscow International Film ...more

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Arthur Rimbaud Died at 37 (1854-1891) Jean Nicolas Arthur Rimbaud was a French poet born in Charleville, Ardennes. He influenced modern literature and arts, inspired various musicians, and prefigured surrealism. He started writing ...more

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Bernard Casadesus Died at 71 (1923-1994) Bernard Casadesus was a musicologist, singer and poet.

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Blaise Cendrars Died at 74 (1887-1961) Frédéric-Louis Sauser, better known as Blaise Cendrars, was a Swiss-born novelist and poet who became a naturalized French citizen in 1916. He was a writer of considerable ...more

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Breyten Breytenbach age 78 Breyten Breytenbach is a South African writer and painter of great eminence. He is informally considered as the national poet laureate by Afrikaans speaking South Africans of the region. He also ...more

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Carlos Alvarado-Larroucau age 54 Carlos Alvarado-Larroucau is an Argentine-born French author. Born in Argentina in 1964.

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Casimir Delavigne Died at 50 (1793-1843) Jean-François Casimir Delavigne was a French poet and dramatist.

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Charles Baudelaire Died at 46 (1821-1867) Charles Pierre Baudelaire was a French poet who also produced notable work as an essayist, art critic, and pioneering translator of Edgar Allan Poe. His most famous work, Les Fleurs du mal, ...more

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Charles Le Goffic Died at 79 (1853-1932) Charles Le Goffic was a French poet, novelist and historian whose influence was especially strong in his native Brittany. He was a member of the Académie française.

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Charles-Julien Lioult de Chênedollé Died at 64 (1769-1833) Charles-Julien Lioult de Chênedollé was a French poet.

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Claude Nougaro Died at 75 (1929-2004) Claude Nougaro was a French songwriter and singer.

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Danielle Collobert Died at 38 (1940-1978) Danielle Collobert was a French author, poet and journalist, born in Rostrenen, Côtes-d'Armor on 23 July 1940. She died, by her own hand, in Paris on 23 July 1978. Her mother, a teacher, ...more

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Dmitri Savitski age 74 Dmitri Petrovich Savitski is a Russian writer and poet.

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Edmond Rostand Died at 50 (1868-1918) Edmond Eugène Alexis Rostand was a French poet and dramatist. He is associated with neo-romanticism, and is best known for his play Cyrano de Bergerac. Rostand's romantic plays contrasted ...more

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Emmanuelle Riva age 91 Emmanuelle Riva is a French actress, best known for her roles in the films Hiroshima mon amour and Amour. In 2013, Riva won the BAFTA Award and the César Award for her lead role in ...more

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Eugène Guillevic Died at 90 (1907-1997) Eugène Guillevic was one of the better known French poets of the second half of the 20th century. Professionally, he went under just the single name "Guillevic".

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Ferdinand Lemaire Died at 47 (1832-1879) Ferdinand Lemaire was a French librettist and poet, best known for writing the libretto of Camille Saint-Saëns's opera Samson et Dalila. Lemaire was a creole, originally from Martinique, ...more

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Fernando Arrabal age 83 Fernando Arrabal Terán is a Spanish playwright, screenwriter, film director, novelist and poet. Arrabal was born in Melilla, Spain, but settled in France in 1955; he describes himself as ...more

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Francis Jammes Died at 70 (1868-1938) Francis Jammes was a French poet. Coming from an ancient family, he spent most of his life in his native region of Béarn and the Basque Country and his poems are known for their lyricism ...more

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Francis Ponge Died at 89 (1899-1988) Francis Jean Gaston Alfred Ponge was a French essayist and poet. Influenced by surrealism, he developed a form of prose poem, minutely examining everyday objects. He was the third recipient of ...more

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François Cheng age 88 François Cheng is a Chinese-born French academician, writer, poet and calligrapher. He is the author of essays, novels, collections of poetry and books on art written in the French ...more

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François Coppée Died at 66 (1842-1908) François Edouard Joachim Coppée was a French poet and novelist.

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François Mauriac Died at 85 (1885-1970) François Charles Mauriac was a French author, member of the Académie française, and laureate of the Nobel Prize in Literature. He was awarded the Grand Cross of the

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François Villon Died at 32 (1431-1463) François Villon born in Paris in 1431 and disappeared from view in 1463, is the best known French poet of the late Middle Ages. A ne'er-do-well who was involved in criminal behavior and ...more

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Frédéric Mistral Died at 84 (1830-1914) Frédéric Mistral was a French writer and lexicographer of the Occitan language. Mistral received the 1904 Nobel Prize in Literature "in recognition of the fresh originality ...more

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Guillaume Amfrye de Chaulieu Died at 81 (1639-1720) Guillaume Amfrye de Chaulieu, French poet and wit, was born at Fontenay, Normandy. His father, maître des comptes of Rouen, sent him to study at the Collège de Navarre. Guillaume ...more

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Guillaume Apollinaire Died at 38 (1880-1918) Guillaume Apollinaire, born Wilhelm Albert Włodzimierz Apolinary Kostrowicki was a French poet, playwright, short story writer, novelist, and art critic of Polish descent. Apollinaire is ...more

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Guillaume de Machaut Died at 77 (1300-1377) Guillaume de Machaut was a medieval French poet and composer. He is one of the earliest composers on whom significant biographical information is available. According to Daniel Leech-Wilkinson, ...more

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Guy de Maupassant Died at 43 (1850-1893) Henri René Albert Guy de Maupassant was a popular French writer, considered one of the fathers of the modern short story and one of the form's finest exponents. Maupassant was a ...more

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Henri Meschonnic Died at 77 (1932-2009) Henry Meschonnic was a French poet, linguist, essayist and translator. He's remembered today as both a theoretician of language and as a translator of the Old Testament. The 710-page Critique du ...more

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Henry David Thoreau Died at 45 (1817-1862) Henry David Thoreau was an American author, naturalist, transcendentalist, tax resister, development critic, surveyor, sage writer and philosopher. He is best known for his book Walden, a ...more

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Isidore Isou Died at 82 (1925-2007) Isidore Isou, born Ioan-Isidor Goldstein, was a Romanian-born French poet, film critic and visual artist. He was the founder of Lettrism, an art and literary movement which owed inspiration to ...more

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Jacques Bins, comte de Saint-Victor Jacques-Maximilien Benjamin Bins, comte de Saint-Victor, a French poet and man of letters.

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Jacques Pelletier du Mans Died at 65 (1517-1582) Jacques Pelletier du Mans, also spelled Peletier, in Latin: Peletarius, was a humanist, poet and mathematician of the French Renaissance. Born at Le Mans into a bourgeois family, he studied at ...more

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Jacques Prévert Died at 77 (1900-1977) Jacques Prévert was a French poet and screenwriter. His poems became and remain popular in the French-speaking world, particularly in schools. His best regarded films formed part of the ...more

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Jacques Roubaud age 85 Jacques Roubaud is a French poet and mathematician. Jacques Roubaud is a professor of poetry at the European Graduate School in Saas-Fee, Switzerland, and he was a professor of Mathematics at ...more

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Jean Bodel Died at 45 (1165-1210) Jean Bodel, who lived in the late twelfth century, was an Old French poet who wrote a number of chansons de geste as well as many fabliaux. He lived in Arras. Bodel wrote the Chanson de Saisnes, ...more

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Jean Cocteau Died at 74 (1889-1963) Jean Maurice Eugène Clément Cocteau was a French writer, designer, playwright, artist and filmmaker. Cocteau is best known for his novel Les Enfants Terribles, and the films Blood ...more