Since the posthumous publication of
Le Lieutenant-Colonel de Maumort in 1983, it seems clear that his claim to being read by posterity will rest on two works, or perhaps three:
Jean Barois (1913; translated, 1949),
Les Thibault (1922-1940; translated, 1926-1941), and possibly
Confidence africaine (African Confession, 1931). His prose fiction is superior to his theater, perhaps because he came to consider drama an inferior genre, useful for him only when there was a gap in the urge to write novels.
Roger Martin du Gard was born on 23 March 1881 at his paternal grandparents' home, 69 boulevard Bineau, Neuilly-sur-Seine. His father, Paul Martin du Gard, was a lawyer; his mother, Madeleine Wimy Martin du Gard, was the daughter of a stockbroker. Martin du Gard's brother, and only sibling, Marcel, was born in December 1884.
While many of the details of his early youth are unknown, it has been ascertained that in October 1892 he became a part-time boarder at the Ecole Fénelon in the rue Général Foy in Paris. He took classes in the fifth, fourth, and third grades at the Lycée Condorcet. He was not a good student except in history and French composition. In January 1896 his father placed him in Passy as a boarding student with Louis Mellerio, who had studied at the Ecole Normale Supérieure.
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