Farrère, Claude

(pen name of Frédéric Charles Édouard Bargone). Born Apr. 27, 1876, in Lyon; died June 21, 1957, in Paris. French writer. Member of the Académie Française (1935).

Farrère made his debut in 1904 with the collection of short stories Opium Smoke. He idealized the French colonialists and assumed a critical stance only when depicting openly vicious and greedy entrepreneurs, as in the novel The Civilized Ones (1905; Russian translation, 1909), which was awarded the Prix Gon-court. Adventure-filled plots and Eastern exoticism contributed to the success of Farrère’s early works. His later novels, such as The New People (1922), are openly reactionary and naturalistic. Farrère also wrote A History of the French Navy (1934) and numerous travel sketches.