Gabrielle Bossis

Gabrielle Bossis (; 1874–1950) was a French Catholic laywoman, nurse, playwright, actress and mystic, best known for her mystical work Lui et Moi, published in a very abridged English translation as He and I.

Life Gabrielle Bossis was born 26 February 1874 in her parents' town house Nantes, the youngest of four children of a wealthy bourgeois family. Her father owned property and ran a business selling boat repair parts. She attended a convent school in Nantes. Her father died in 1898, her mother would bring the family to spend winters in Nice. Her mother died in 1908, and her sister Clémence in 1912. Her inheritance allowed her to set up a business making church ornaments for the Missions.

She obtained a nursing degree. During World War I, she was a nurse for four years, first in a hospital and then at the front near Verdun.

In 1923, at the request of the parish priest of Le Fresne-sur-Loire, she wrote a play called Czar, which was a great success. From 1923 to 1936, Bossis wrote thirteen three act comedies. She not only wrote plays, but also directed and played leading roles in them. She wrote many other works, in which witty and cheerful content is combined with a moral and religious underpinning. She soon became famous and toured with her plays not only France, but also other countries in Europe, North Africa, North America and Canada.

She always dressed in white, with wide-brimmed hats and old-fashioned dresses. Even when traveling, she never missed daily Mass if at all possible. With the German occupation in 1940, Bossis found refuge in Curzon. Her house in Nantes was bombed in 1943.