The French writer and politician Auguste Maurice Barrès (1862-1923) was the author of numerous novels, essays, and articles and was a member of the Chamber of Deputies and of the Académie Française.

Maurice Barrès was born in Charmes near Nancy and passed a happy childhood in a well-to-do family. In 1882 Barrès went to Paris to study law, but he soon became involved in the literary life of the Latin Quarter and acquired a reputation as a rebel and dandy. He flaunted his egotism, while also expressing a profound desire for action, in his first trilogy, Le Culte du moi (Sous l'oeil des barbares, 1888, Under the Eye of the Barbarians; Un Homme libre, 1889, A Free Man; and Le Jardin de Bérénice, 1891, The Garden of Bérénice). The themes of exoticism and fascination...