THIS IS THE DIARY JUNCTION - DATA AND LINKS FOR OVER 500 HISTORICAL AND LITERARY DIARISTS
PLEASE TAKE A MOMENT ALSO TO LOOK AT KIP FENN, A MAJOR NOVEL ABOUT THE 21st CENTURY
- freely available on this site
Gide, André ___ 1869-1951 ___
French ___ writer
BIOGRAPHICAL SUMMARY
Gide was born in Paris, but brought
up in Normandy, where he was tutored at home, and where he was often ill.
His father was a Paris University professor of law who died when André
was only 11, and his uncle was a political economist. During 1893-94, he
travelled in northern Africa, meeting Oscar Wilder in Algiers, and began
trying to accept his own homosexuality. He also had a fall and was gravely
ill. In 1895, after his mother's death, he married his cousin Madeleine
Rondeaux but the marriage was never consummated. Although homosexual, Gide
did have a daughter, Catherine, in 1923, with Maria Van Rysselberghe. In
1896 he became mayor of a commune in Normandy, and later he was also a juror
in Rouen. Gide's 'Fruits of the Earth' appeared in 1897 and was to become
one of his most popular works, influencing later writers, such as Camus
and Sartre. In it, he preached a doctrine of active hedonism. In later novels,
though, he was more careful to examine the problems of individual freedom
and responsibility from different points of view. In 1909, Gide helped found
the influential literary magazine 'The New French Review', which published
many of his essays. From the mid-1920s, Gide began to work for social reforms,
demanding more humane conditions for criminals for example. Between 1925
and 1927, he travelled with his friend Marc Allegret, to the Congo; and,
from 1942 until the end of the Second World War, he lived in North Africa.
His fame grew in the 1940s, and in 1947 he was awarded the Nobel Prize.
His diaries are 'witty, candid and compelling' according to Irene and Alan
Taylor.
One
biography link
DIARY DATES, CONTENT DESCRIPTORS
1889-1949 ___ literary political
people health love/sex self people Algeria Congo
WEB TEXT LINKS
about
the diary
ORIGINAL MANUSCRIPT LINKS
SOME PUBLISHED TITLES
The Journals of Andre Gide
May 2005
THIS IS THE DIARY JUNCTION - DATA AND LINKS FOR OVER 500 HISTORICAL AND LITERARY DIARISTS
Please
email if you have any corrections, additions or comments. |
IMPORTANT NOTES AND CAUTIONS:
1) The first line of basic information
may be incomplete in several ways: some historical figures have different
names (titles, pen-names); their birth and death dates may be unknown or
uncertain (g - guess, c - circa); similarly, their occupations may be unknown,
or they may have had other jobs; and, for early diarists, I've used 'British'
a bit too freely. 2) The biographical summary may not be accurate. It was
compiled quickly from various sources, mostly on the internet, and the facts
were not checked anywhere near as rigorously as they would have been if
they'd been intended for publication in a printed form. 3) The journal dates
and descriptors (which are in no particular order) must be treated with
caution: since I have not examined the diaries myself, the descriptors are
only guesses based on bibliographies, anthologies and internet biographies.
4) For the biography and etext links, I have ignored any sites with charges,
and I have avoided, wherever possible, those with pop-ups or too much advertising.
I have limited myself to providing three etext links where there is some
variety between them. 5) For the original manuscript links, I have limited
myself to providing a maximum of two (although, for a few diarists, their
original diaries are held in more than two places). 6) I have provided the
titles - chosen randomly - for up to three printed editions of the diaries. |