Georges Courteline

Georges Courteline (June 25, 1858 – June 25, 1929) was a French dramatist and novelist.

Born Georges Victor Marcel Moinaux, in Tours in the Indre-et-Loire département, his family moved to Paris shortly after his birth. During the time of the Paris Commune, at age 13, he was sent to study at Collège de Meaux and after graduation in 1876, he went on to serve in the French military before taking a job as a civil servant. Interested in poetry and authorship, he became involved writing poetry reviews and was part of a small newspaper. By the 1890s, he had begun writing plays under the name Courteline for the theaters of Montmartre where he lived.

Gifted with a quick wit, he became a leading dramatist, producing many plays as well as a number of novels. The overall tone of his works was satirical in nature, often making fun of everything from the wealthy elitists of Paris to the bloated government bureaucracies. In 1899, Courteline was awarded the Legion of Honor and in 1926 was elected to the Académie Goncourt.

In 1929, Georges Courteline died on his 71st birthday in Paris and was interred there in the Père Lachaise Cemetery. Rue de Lariche, the street in the city of Tours where he was born, was renamed in his honour.

He was Jean Renoir's favorite dramatist.