Andre Gide

In 1895, he married his cousin Madaleine Rondeaux but the marriage was an unconsummated one due to his dissimilar sexual orientation. She died in 1938 and thereafter became the subject of his book ‘Et Nunc Manet in Te’.

In 1916, he began a relationship with 15 year old boy, Marc Allegret., who was the son of the best man at his wedding, Elie Allegret. He adopted Marc and fled to London along with him.

In 1923, he fathered a daughter with a much younger Elisabeth van Rysselberghe who was the daughter of his closest female friend Maria Monnom. He christened his daughter Catherine.

He was born into a middle-class protestant family to a Law Professor at the University of Paris, Paul Gide and his wife Juliette Rondeaux. He received his early education at home before moving to the school.

At the age of 8, he enrolled in Ecole Alsacienne in Paris but his health conditions didn’t permit him to have a continual education. As a result, he was instructed by private tutors at home.

In 1880, his father left for heavenly abode and he was raised up by his mother who was devoutly concerned about him. He received tuition from his mother’s governess as well as private tutors.

In 1891, he published his novel, Les Cahiers d'Andre Walter (The Notebooks of Andre Walter). It was well received by his friend, Pierre Louys, a French novelist and poet, who introduced him to the works of Stephane Mallarme, a major French Symbolist poet.

In 1893 and 1893, he embarked on a journey to North Africa where he became acquainted with the life and practices of the Arab world which liberated him from the restrictive and pointless Victorian convictions at social and sexual levels. His growing awareness of his homosexuality made him accept the need to follow his own impulses and the open atmosphere that offered him the much-needed encouragement.

In 1895, he met Oscar Wilde and Lord Alfred Douglas, in Algiers, who became his close friends and further encouraged him to accept his homosexuality without any hint of guilt.

In early 1896, he was elected as a Mayor of a commune in Normandy, La Roque--Baignard and became the youngest Mayor ever. In the same year, he completed his book, ‘Fruits of the Earth’, which was published a year later but not well-received. By the end of the First World War it became one of his most influential works.

In 1918, he met Dorothy Bussy, an English novelist and translator, who was his long-time friend. She assisted him in translating his works to English, being originally in French.

In 1908, he founded a literary magazine, ‘La Nouvelle Revue Francaise’ (The New French Review) along with Jacques Copeau and Jean Sclumber.

In 1923, he published a book on Fyodor Dostoyevsky, a Russian novelist, short-story writer and essayist. In the following year, with the publication of ‘Corydon’, he was greatly condemned. The book was based on homosexuality in which he defended pederasty.

In 1924, he published his autobiography, ‘Si le grain ne meurt’ (Unless the seed dies). It was based on those themes which obsessed him throughout his career and imbued his famous classical novels, ‘The Immoralist’ and ‘The Counterfeiters’.