Charles Vildrac

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

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.

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 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

France, Peter (Ed.) (1995). The New Oxford Companion to Literature in French. Oxford: Clarendon Press. .