Gaston Chérau

Gaston Chérau
Gaston Chérau's grave at Prissac (Indre)
Born	6 November 1872 Niort
Died	20 April 1937(1937-04-20) (aged 64) Boston
Occupation	Writer Journalist

Gaston Chérau (6 November 1872 – 20 April 1937) was a French man of letters and journalist.

The son of an industrialist, Gaston Chérau died in Boston during a lecture tour. A journalist and chronicler, he regularly gave the press his impressions of travel.

In 1911, he traveled through Tripolitania conquered by the Italians on behalf of Le Matin newspaper.

In 1914, he was a war reporter for the newspaper L'Illustration in Belgium and the North of France.

A fertile novelist of the province, his pen is very influenced by the Berry where he had family roots, stayed a part of his childhood, and where he returned assiduously on vacation in a second home until the end of his life.

He was elected a member of the Académie Goncourt in 1926.

He was also interested in cinema and wrote the dialogues of the film Les Deux mondes (1930) directed by Ewald Andreas Dupont.

He is the author of about forty novels.

A generous epicurean, he prefaced the Histoire du cognac by Robert Delamain () (Stock, 1935), an archeologist and writer from an old family of merchants in brandy from Jarnac, whose younger brother Jacques (1874–1953), author among others of Portraits d'oiseaux (Stock, 1938 and 1952) was the brother-in-law of the writer Jacques Boutelleau (1884–1968), called Jacques Chardonne.

He wrote a number of works for children such as Jacques Petitpont, roi de Madagascar (J. Ferenczi, 1928, ill. d'Avelot), L'enlèvement de la princesse (Hachette, 1934, ill. André Pécoud ) or Contes et nouvelles de Gascogne (Bibliothèque Nelson illustrée, 1938, ill. Georges Dutriac).

Georges Bernanos described him as a "Maupassant of sub-prefecture", because he had not voted for the Voyage au bout de la nuit by Louis-Ferdinand Céline at the 1932 edition of the prix Goncourt (Le Figaro, 13 December 1932).