Charles Vildrac (November 22, 1882 – June 25, 1971), born "Charles Messager",[1] was a French libertarian playwright, poet and author of what some consider the first modern children's novel, L'Île rose (1924).

Charles Vildrac and his wife in 1926

Born in Paris, Vildrac's first poems were written when he was a teenager in the 1890s. In 1901 he published Le Verlibrisme, a defense of traditional verse. In 1912 he published a collection of prose poems.[1]

He was a member of the Abbaye de Créteil which he founded with Georges Duhamel. He died in Saint-Tropez.

The Prix de poésie Charles Vildrac is named for him.

Works

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  • Poèmes (1905)
  • Images et mirages (1907), poems
  • Livre d'amour (1910), poems
  • Notes sur la technique poétique (1910), Notes on Poetic Technique, with Georges Duhamel
  • Chants du désespéré (1914–20) (1920), Songs of a Desperate Man, poems
  • Découverte (1912), récit novel
  • Chants du désespéré (1920), poems
  • Le Paquebot Tenacity (1920; lit. S.S. Tenacity), theatre play
  • L'Indigent (1920), theatre play
  • Michel Auclair (1921)
  • L'Île rose (1924), children's novel, lit. The Pink Island, translated as Rose Island
  • Poèmes de l'Abbaye (1925), poems
  • Madame Béliard (1925), theatre play
  • Prolongement (1927), poems
  • D’un voyage au Japon (1927), travel story
  • La Brouille (1930), The Misunderstanding, theatre play
  • La Colonie (1930), children's novel (sequel to L'Île rose)
  • Les Lunettes du lion (1932), children's tale
  • La famille Moineau (1932), children's tale
  • Le Jardinier de Samos (1932), theatre play
  • Milot (1933), children's tale
  • Bridinette (1935), children's tale
  • Poucette (1936), theatre play
  • L'œuvre peinte d'Eugène Dabit (1937), monographie
  • Russie neuve (1938), travel story
  • L'Air du temps (1938), theatre play
  • Trois mois de prison (1942)
  • L'Honneur des poètes (1943]), volume of poems published by the French Resistance; Vildrac's contribution appears under the pseudonym Robert Barade
  • Lazare (1945), in Chroniques de Minuit, Les Éditions de Minuit, p. 15-39
  • Les Pères ennemis (1946), The Enemy Fathers, theatre play
  • D'après l'écho (1949)
  • Amadou le Bouquillon (1951), children's tale
  • Les Jouets du Père Noël (1952), The Toys of Father Christmas
  • Pages de journal (1968)

Notes and references

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  1. ^ a b 1971 Britannica Book of the Year (for events of 1971), "Obituaries 1971" article, page 532, "Vildrac, Charles" item
  • France, Peter (Ed.) (1995). The New Oxford Companion to Literature in French. Oxford: Clarendon Press. ISBN 0-19-866125-8.
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