Georges Courteline, French author and playwright (d. 1929)
Georges Courteline born Georges Victor Marcel Moinaux (25 June 1858 – 25 June 1929) was a French dramatist and novelist, a satirist notable for his sharp wit and cynical humor.
His family moved from Tours in Indre-et-Loire to Paris shortly after his birth. During the time of the Paris Commune, at age 13, he was sent to school in Meaux and after graduation in 1876, he went on to serve in the French military before taking a job as a civil servant. Interested in poetry and authorship, he became involved writing poetry reviews and was part of a small newspaper. By the 1890s, he had begun writing plays under the name Courteline for the theatres of Montmartre where he lived.
Gifted with a quick wit, he became a leading dramatist, producing many plays as well as a number of novels. The overall tone of his works was satirical in nature, often making fun of everything from the wealthy elitists of Paris to the bloated government bureaucracies. In 1899, Courteline was awarded the Legion of Honour and in 1926 was elected to the Académie Goncourt.
In 1929, Courteline died on his 71st birthday in Paris and was interred there in the Père Lachaise Cemetery. Rue de Lariche, the street in the city of Tours where he was born, was renamed in his honour.
1858Jun, 25
Georges Courteline
Choose Another Date
Events on 1858
- 25Jan
Felix Mendelssohn
The Wedding March by Felix Mendelssohn is played at the marriage of Queen Victoria's daughter, Victoria, and Friedrich of Prussia, and becomes a popular wedding processional. - 11Feb
Lourdes apparitions
Bernadette Soubirous's first vision of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Lourdes, France. - 5Aug
Transatlantic telegraph cable
Cyrus West Field and others complete the first transatlantic telegraph cable after several unsuccessful attempts. It will operate for less than a month. - 16Aug
Transatlantic telegraph cable
U.S. President James Buchanan inaugurates the new transatlantic telegraph cable by exchanging greetings with Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom. However, a weak signal forces a shutdown of the service in a few weeks. - 20Aug
Evolution
Charles Darwin first publishes his theory of evolution through natural selection in The Journal of the Proceedings of the Linnean Society of London, alongside Alfred Russel Wallace's same theory.