Martin Du Gard, Roger

Related Category: French Literature: Biographies

(rôzhā´ märtăN´ də gär), 1881–1958, French novelist. Long associated with the Nouvelle Revue française, he first gained recognition with Jean Barois (1913), a novel of France during the Dreyfus Affair. His fame, however, rests chiefly on his eight-part novel cycle The World of the Thibaults (1922–40, tr. 1939–41). A story of two families, one Roman Catholic and the other Protestant, it explores the conflicts of French society in the early 20th cent. He also began a second ambitious novel, Lieutenant-Colonel de Maumort, unfinished at his death and not published until 1983 (tr. 1999). His other books include Confidence africaine (1931) and Vieille France (1933, tr. The Postman, 1954). Martin du Gard was awarded the 1937 Nobel Prize in Literature.

See studies by D. I. Schalk (1967) and C. H. Sarage (1968).