Maurois was born on 26 July 1885 in Elbeuf and educated at the Lycée Pierre CorneilleinRouen,[1] both in Normandy. A member of the Javal family, Maurois was the son of Ernest Herzog, a Jewish textile manufacturer, and his wife Alice Lévy-Rueff. His family had fled Alsace after the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–71 and took refuge in Elbeuf, where they owned a woollen mill.[2] As noted by Maurois, the family brought their entire Alsatian workforce with them to the relocated mill, for which Maurois' grandfather was admitted to the Legion of Honour for having "saved a French industry".[3] This family background is reflected in Maurois' Bernard Quesnay: the story of a young World War I veteran with artistic and intellectual inclinations who is drawn, much against his will, to work as a director in his grandfather's textile mills – a character clearly having many autobiographical elements.[4][5]
During World War I he joined the French army and served as an interpreter for Lieutenant Colonel Winston Churchill (according to Martin GilbertinChurchill and the Jews, Henry Holt and Company, New York, 2007) and later a liaison officer with the British army. His first novel, Les silences du colonel Bramble, was a witty and socially realistic account of that experience. It was an immediate success in France. It was translated and became popular in the United Kingdom and other English-speaking countries as The Silence of Colonel Bramble. Many of his other works have also been translated into English,[a] for they often dealt with British people or topics, such as his biographies of Disraeli, Byron, and Shelley.
In 1938 Maurois was elected to the prestigious Académie française. He was encouraged and assisted in seeking this membership by Marshal Philippe Pétain, and he made a point of acknowledging with thanks his debt to Pétain in his 1941 autobiography, Call no man happy – though by the time of writing their paths had sharply diverged, Pétain having become Head of State of Vichy France.
When World War II began, he was appointed the French Official Observer attached to the British General Headquarters. In this capacity he accompanied the British Army to Belgium. He knew personally the main politicians in the French government, and on 10 June 1940 he was sent on a mission to London. After the Armistice ended that mission, Maurois was demobilised and travelled from England to Canada. He wrote of these experiences in his book Tragedy in France.[6]
Later in World War II he served in the French army and the Free French Forces.
His Mauroispseudonym became his legal name in 1947.
Maurois's first wife was Jeanne-Marie Wanda de Szymkiewicz, a young Polish-Russian aristocrat who had studied at Oxford University. She had a nervous breakdown in 1918 and in 1924 she died of sepsis. After his father died, Maurois stopped working in textiles (in the 1926 novel Bernard Quesnay he in effect described an alternative life of himself, in which he would have plunged into the life of a textile industrialist and given up everything else).
Les silences du colonel Bramble, Paris: Grasset, 1918 (includes "Si—", a French translation of Kipling's poem "If—")
The Silence of Colonel Bramble, London: John Lane / The Bodley Head, 1919 (English translation of Les silences du Colonel Bramble; text translated from the French by Thurfrida Wake; verse translated by Wilfrid Jackson)
Ni ange, ni bête, Paris: Grasset, 1919; English translation: Neither Angel, Nor Beast, Lincoln, NE: Infusionmedia, 2015 (translated by Preston and Sylvie Shires)
Les Discours du docteur O'Grady, Paris: Grasset, 1922 ("Le Roman" series); English translation: The Silence of Colonel Bramble; and, The Discourses of Doctor O'Grady, London: Bodley Head, 1965
Climats, Paris: Grasset, 1923; Paris, Société d'édition "Le livre", 1929 (illustrated by Jean Hugo); English translation: Whatever Gods May Be, London: Cassell, 1931 (translated by Joseph Collins)
Ariel, ou La vie de Shelley, Paris: Grasset, 1923; English translation: Ariel: The Life of Shelley, New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1924 (translated by Ella D'Arcy)
Dialogue sur le commandement, Paris: Grasset, 1924; English translation: Captains and Kings, London, John Lane / The Bodley Head, 1925
Lord Byron et le démon de la tendresse, Paris: A l'enseigne de la Porte Etroite, 1925
Mape, London: John Lane / The Bodley Head, 1926 (translated by Eric Sutton, with 4 woodcuts by Constance Grant); Mape: The World of Illusion: Goethe, Balzac, Mrs. Siddons, New York: D. Appleton, 1926
La vie de Disraëli, Paris: Gallimard, 1927 ("Vies des hommes illustres" series); English translation: Disraeli: A Picture of the Victorian Age, London: John Lane / The Bodley Head, 1927 (translated by Hamish Miles)
Études anglaises: Dickens, Walpole, Ruskin et Wilde, La jeune littérature, Paris: Grasset, 1927
Un essai sur Dickens, Paris: Grasset, 1927 (Les Cahiers Verts n° 3)
Le chapitre suivant, Paris: Éditions du Sagittaire, 1927 (Les Cahiers Nouveaux, N° 34); English translation: The Next Chapter: The War Against the Moon, London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co., 1928
Aspects de la biographie, Paris: Grasset, 1928; Paris: Au Sens Pareil, 1928; English translation: Aspects of Biography, Cambridge University Press, 1929 (translated by S. C. Roberts)
Deux fragments d'une histoire universelle: 1992, Paris: Éditions des Portiques, 1928 ("Le coffret des histoires extraordinaires" series)
La vie de Sir Alexander Fleming, Paris: Hachette, 1929: English translation: The Life of Sir Alexander Fleming: Discoverer of Penicillin, New York: E. P. Dutton, 1958 (translated by Gerard Hopkins and with an introduction by Professor Robert Cruickshank)
Byron, Paris: Grasset, 1930; English translation: Byron, London: Jonathan Cape, 1930 (translated by Hamish Miles)
Patapoufs et Filifers, Paris: Paul Hartmann, 1930. With 75 drawings by Jean Bruller (Vercors); English translation: Fattypuffs and Thinifers, New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1940 (translated by Rosemary Benet)
Lyautey, Paris: Plon, 1931 ("Choses vues" series); English translation: Marshall Lyautey, London: John Lane / The Bodley Head, 1931 (translated by Hamish Miles)
Le Peseur d'âmes, Paris: Gallimard, 1931; English translation: The Weigher of Souls, London, Cassell, 1931 (translated by Hamish Miles)
Chateaubriand, Paris: Grasset, 1932; also published under the title of: René ou la Vie de Chateaubriand; English translation (translated by Vera Fraser): Chateaubriand, London: Jonathan Cape, 1938; Chateaubriand: Poet, Statesman, Lover, New York: Harper & Brothers, 1938
Cercle de famille, 1932; English translation: The Family Circle, London: Peter Davies, 1932 (translated by Hamish Miles)
Voltaire, London: Peter Davies, 1932 (translated by Hamish Miles)
Chantiers américains, Paris: Gallimard, NRF collection, 1933 (a collection of articles on America's 'New Deal' projects started under president Franklin Delano Roosevelt)
Édouard VII et son temps, Paris: Les Éditions de France, 1933; English translation: The Edwardian Era, New York: D. Appleton-Century, 1933
Kipling and His Works from a French Point of View (The Kipling Society, 1934; republished in Rudyard Kipling: The Critical Heritage, ed. R.L. Green, 1971 & 1997)
Ricochets: Miniature Tales of Human Life, London: Cassell, 1934 (translated from the French by Hamish Miles); New York: Harper and Brothers, 1937
Histoire d'Angleterre, Paris: A. Fayard et Cie, 1937 ("Les grandes études historiques" series); English translation: A History of England, London: Jonathan Cape, 1937
La machine à lire les pensées: Récit, Paris: Gallimard, 1937; English translation: The Thought Reading Machine, London: Jonathan Cape, 1938; New York: Harper & Brothers, 1938 (translated by James Whitall)
The Miracle of England: An Account of Her Rise to Pre-Eminence and Present Position, New York: Harper & Brothers, 1937
Un art de vivre, Paris: Plon, 1939 ("Présences" series); English translation: The Art of Living, London: English Universities Press, 1940 (translated by James Whitall)
Les origines de la guerre de 1939, Paris: Gallimard, 1939
Tragedy in France: An Eyewitness Account, New York: Harper & Brothers, 1940 (translated by Denver Lindley)
Why France Fell, London: John Lane / The Bodley Head, 1941 (translated by Denver Lindley)
I Remember, I Remember, New York: Harper & Brothers, 1942
Call No Man Happy: Autobiography, London, Jonathan Cape in association with The Book Society, 1943 (translated by Denver and Jane Lindley); The Reprint Society, 1944
The Miracle of America, New York: Harper & Brothers, 1944
Woman Without Love. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1944
From My Journal: The Record of a Year of Adjustment for an Individual and for the World, New York: Harper & Brothers, 1947 (translated by Joan Charles)
Histoire de la France, Paris: Dominique Wapler, 1947
Alain, Paris: Domat, 1949 ("Au voilier" series)
À la recherche de Marcel Proust, Paris: Hachette, 1949; English translation: Proust: Portrait of a Genius, New York, Harper, 1950 (translated by Gerard Hopkins); Proust: a Biography, Meridian Books, 1958
My American Journal, London: The Falcon Press, 1950
Lélia, ou la vie de George Sand, Paris: Hachette, 1952; English translation: Lelia: The Life of George Sand, London: Jonathan Cape, 1952 (translated by Gerard Hopkins)
Destins exemplaires (Paris: Plon, 1952); English translation: Profiles of Great Men, Ipswich, UK: Tower Bridge Publications, 1954 (translated by Helen Temple Patterson)
Lettres à l'inconnue, Paris: La Jeune Parque, 1953; English translation: To an Unknown Lady, New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., 1957
Olympio ou la vie de Victor Hugo, Paris: Hachette, 1954; English translation: Olympio: The Turbulent Life of Victor Hugo, New York: Harper & Brothers, 1956 (translated by Gerard Hopkins)
Lecture, mon doux plaisir, Paris: Arthème Fayard, 1957 ("Les Quarante" series); English translation: The Art of Writing, London: The Bodley Head, 1960 (translated by Gerard Hopkins)
Les Titans ou Les Trois Dumas, Paris: Hachette, 1957: English translation: Titans: A Three-Generation Biography of the Dumas, New York: Harper, 1957 (translated by Gerard Hopkins)
Adrienne, ou, La vie de Mme de La Fayette, Paris: Hachette, 1960
Prométhée ou la Vie de Balzac, Paris: Hachette, 1965; English translation: Prometheus: The Life of Balzac, London: The Bodley Head, 1965 (translated by Norman Denny); New York: Harper & Row, 1965
Points of View from Kipling to Graham Greene, New York: Frederick Ungar, 1968; London: Frederick Muller, 1969
Memoirs 1885–1967, New York: Harper & Row, 1970 (A Cass Canfield Book; translated by Denver Lindley); London: The Bodley Head, 1970
Short stories by Maurois as collected in The Collected Stories of André Maurois, New York: Washington Square Press, 1967 (translated by Adrienne Foulke):
