Jules Renard
1864–1910
Biography
Jules Renard (1864–1910) was a French novelist, playwright and diarist, admired for a spare, exact style that often turns on a sharp, ironic phrase. He was born in 1864 and died in 1910 at the age of forty-six. He later became a member of the Académie Goncourt, the body that awards the Prix Goncourt.
His best-known novel, Poil de carotte (1894), draws on his own unhappy boyhood. Its title is a nickname for a red-haired boy, roughly carrot-top, and the book follows him as his mother and father neglect and ill-treat him at home. Renard tells it with a cool, bitter irony that makes the cruelty harder to read rather than easier.
He also wrote Les Histoires naturelles (1896), a set of short, exact sketches of country life and animals, and Le Plaisir de rompre (1898), as well as plays. His Journal, a diary he kept for most of his adult life and which was published largely after his death, is prized for its wit and its close attention to people and small things. The copy listed on this site is Poil de carotte, the book on which his reputation chiefly rests.
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Books
Poil de Carotte
by Jules Renard
Poil de Carotte (transl. Carrot Top) is a long short story or autobiographical novel by Jules Renard published in 1894 which recounts the childhood and the trials of a redheaded child. It is probably in this miserable childhood story where one should look for the origins of…
Summary from Wikipedia: Poil de Carotte (CC BY-SA 4.0)