Claude Ferval

Claude Ferval (18561943) was a French novelist, biographer and poet. Claude Ferval was the pen name used by Baroness Marguerite Aimery Harty de Pierrebourg, née Thomas-Galline.

Biography Marguerite Thomas-Galline was born on 15 June 1856 in Agen. Her father was a general and moved from garrison to garrison. She spent part of her childhood in Lyon where she was a boarder at the Assumption Convent. In Lyon on 18 April 1876, she married Baron Aimery Harty de Pierrebourg and they had a son and daughter. She followed him to Algeria and his other postings. For about ten years she devoted herself to painting, attending the Académie Julian, working under the direction of painter Tony Robert-Fleury and exhibiting at the Paris Salon.

After her daughter's marriage in 1910 Count Georges de Lauris,

Claude Ferval devoted the rest of her literary career to writing biographies, most often of great female figures. The critical reception was generally very favorable, for example author Maurice Rostand wrote about her book, Ninon et son cortège, "Here is a very beautiful book and of such endearing poetry that it is impossible to interrupt the reading once begun. The charm of Ninon seems to still live there, stolen from the smile of her portraits, from the silence of her tomb. And the charm that emanates from it, this charm at once so persistent and so strong, is the most different from that which generally arises from these historical resurrections. It is that, like any superior work, this beautiful book has a secret..." whose name, in 1922, would become the Prix Fémina. She was a member of the Société des Gens de Lettres.

She died on 20 April 1943, in Herbault (Loir-et-Cher), France, and is buried in Passy Cemetery in Paris, in the tomb of her deceased lover Paul Hervieu.

Distinctions Claude Ferval received two prizes from the Académie Française 1934, the Academy Prize for Rousseau and Women (3,000 francs) 1903, the Montyon Prize for L'autre amour (1,000 francs)