Goncourt

The Goncourt brothers (French: [ɡɔ̃kuːʁ]) were Edmond de Goncourt ([ɛdmɔ̃], 1822–96) and Jules de Goncourt ([ʒyl], 1830–70), both French naturalism writers who as collaborative sibling authors, were inseparable in life.

They formed a partnership that "is possibly unique in literary history. Not only did they write all their books together, they did not spend more than a day apart in their adult lives, until they were finally parted by Jules's death in 1870." They are known for their literary work and for their diaries, which offer an intimate view into the French literary society of the later 19th century.

Their career as writers began with an account of a sketching holiday together. They then published books on aspects of 18th-century French and Japanese art and society. Their histories (Portraits intimes du XVIIIe siècle (1857), La Femme au XVIIIe siècle (1862), La du Barry (1878), and others) are made entirely out of documents, autograph letters, scraps of costume, engravings, songs, the unconscious self-revelations of the time. In their volumes (e.g., Portraits intimes du XVIII siecle), they dismissed the vulgarity of the Second Empire in favour of a more refined age. They wrote the long Journal des Goncourt from 1851, which gives a view of the literary and social life of their time.

When they came to write novels, it was with a similar attempt to give the inner, undiscovered, minute truths of contemporary existence. They published six novels, of which Germinie Lacerteux, 1865, was the fourth. It is based on the true case of their own maidservant, Rose Malingre, whose double life they had never suspected. After the death of Jules, Edmond continued to write novels in the same style.

According to the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition:

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