Pierre Benoit (French pronunciation:[pjɛʁbənwa]; 16 July 1886 – 3 March 1962) was a French novelist, screenwriter and member of the Académie française.[1] He is perhaps best known for his second novel L'Atlantide (1919) that has been filmed several times.
Biography
Pierre Benoit, born in Albi (southern France) was the son of a French soldier. Benoit spent his early years and military service in Northern Africa, before becoming a civil servant and librarian.[2] In 1914 he published his first book of poems. He then joined the French army and after the Battle of Charleroi was hospitalised and demobilised.
In 1923 Benoit was sent to Turkey as a journalist of Le Journal and later visited other nations.[3] During this decade, many of his novels were turned into films, including La Châtelaine du Liban.
He attempted to resign from the Académie française in 1959 in protest over their refusal to accept the writer Paul Morand after his application was vetoed by General Charles DeGaulle.
Late in his life, Benoit gave a series of interviews with the French writer Paul Guimard.[2]
^French Twentieth Bibliography: Critical and Bibliographical William J. Thompson - 2001... - Page 17210 "Maltère, Stéphane: "Le monde littéraire antique dans L'Atlantide de Pierre Benoit, " Cahiers des Amis de Poirre Boneit Frenchaises, no. 10 (1999), 21-30. [BNF] X1361. Monestier, Louis: "Histoire de l'association des 'Amis de Pierre Benoit'. Première partie ..."
^ abcdeHugo Frey, "Afterword" to The Queen of Atlantis, Bison Books, ISBN0803269161, (p.289-312)
^p.74 Flower, John Historical Dictionary of French Literature Scarecrow Press, 17 Jan 2013
^Karen Fiss, Grand Illusion: The Third Reich, the Paris Exposition, and the Cultural Seduction of France. University of Chicago Press, 2009 ISBN0226252019, (p.201)
