Rivière, Jacques

(1886-1925)

   writer

   A founder in 1910 and the moving spirit of the influential Nouvelle Revue française, which he then edited from 1919 onward, Jacques Rivière was born in bordeaux. From his student days, he was a friend of alain-fournier, who later became his brother-in-law and with whom he carried on an important Correspondance (January 1905-July 1914), along with paul claudel and andré gide. Rivière is the author of Études (1911), a work dealing with his contemporaries (Gide, Claudel, and Francis jammes), and a collection of memoirs, L'Allemand (1918), of his time as a prisoner of war in world war I, and of a novel, Aimée (1922). Returning to Catholicism in 1913, he left manuscripts that were reorganized by his wife after his death (À la trace de Dieu, 1925). Essays that were published after his death include Rimbaud (1933), De la foi (1928), and Moralisme et Littérature (1933). He also left an unfinished novel, Florence (1935).