Albert Lozeau is one of a group of young poets who in the early twentieth century gave a new direction to French-Canadian poetry. With his contemporary Emile Nelligan, Lozeau is often considered one of the most gifted and successful writers associated with the Ecole Littéraire de Montréal. His "intimiste" (intimate) poems, praised for their subtle musical harmonies and formal perfection, marked a significant change from the rather pompously patriotic or religious verse of the "Soirées Canadiennes." Whereas Octave Crémazie and Louis Fréchette had been the epigones of the French romantics, Lozeau and the other poets of the Ecole Littéraire are generally associated with the symbolists and the Parnassians.

Lozeau's life was spent in the immobility and confinement forced upon him by paralysis of the legs (caused by spinal tuberculosis, or Pott's disease), which struck him at...