Biography

Marcel Schneider (11 August 1913 – 22 January 2009) was a French writer, laureate of numerous literary awards. Schneider was born in a family of Alsatian origin who chose France after 1871. An agrégé es letters, he taught in Rouen (Jean Lecanuet was among his students), before devoting himself entirely to literature and music. He came to live in Paris and became a member of the publishing house Grasset. Both as a writer and as a historian of literature, he was an adept of fantastic literature. He recognized three masters in the fantastic field: Charles Nodier, Gérard de Nerval and Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann. A very good connoisseur of music, he published works on Schubert and Wagner and traced the history of the ballet since Louis XIV. A sympathizer of the Action française, he was close to writers as different as André Gide, Georges Dumézil and Paul Morand who bequeathed him his wardrobe. He also attended literary salons including those of Marie-Laure de Noailles, Solange de La Baume, Josette Day and Florence Gould. In the 1980s, he regularly wrote in Le Quotidien de Paris (Groupe Quotidien), founded and directed by Philippe Tesson. He was close to friends such as Jacques Brenner, Henri Sauguet and Matthieu Galey and used to publish in Brenner's Les Cahiers des Saison (1953–1962). Schneider was awarded the 1996 prix de la langue française. He is buried at Père Lachaise Cemetery (45th division). Source: Article "Marcel Schneider (writer)" from Wikipedia in English, licensed under CC-BY-SA 3.0.