Paul Bourget

Paul Charles Joseph Bourget was a French novelist and critic. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature five times. Paul Bourget was born on 2 September 1852 in Amiens in the Somme département of Picardy, France. His father, a professor of mathematics, was later appointed to a post in the college at Clermont-Ferrand, where Bourget received his early education. He afterwards studied at the Lycée Louis-le-Grand and at the École des Hautes Études. On 16 March 1914, he was present in the offices of the newspaper, Le Figaro when the newspaper's editor, his friend Gaston Calmette was shot and killed by Henriette Caillaux the wife of a former Prime Minister of France. Her subsequent trial caused an enormous scandal at the time. He was a contributor to Le Visage de l'Italie, a 1929 book about Italy prefaced by Benito Mussolini.