Maurice Donnay

Initially, Maurice Donnay considered following his father’s, a railway engineer’s, footsteps and entered the École Centrale des Arts et Manufactures in Paris in 1882. But soon he gave up engineering and devoted himself to literature. He started writing songs for the famous Chat Noir cabaret. In 1889, he became the secretary, for almost two years, of Jacques Saint-Cère (1855-1898), a journalist writing for the Figaro about foreign politics.

In 1892, Donnay’s first play, Lysistrata, was staged. This was the beginning of a long and very successful career as a boulevard author. His best play is considered Les Amants (Lovers) from 1895. Despite their lightness, his plays revealed progressive ideas about the relationship between the two sexes and rendered convincingly the spoken language. Donnay was elected into the Académie française in 1907 and appointed Grand Officer of the Legion of Honor in 1935.