Ernest Pérochon

Ernest Pérochon (1885–1942) was a French writer who won the Prix Goncourt in 1920 for his novel Nêne. Initially a teacher, he left his career in education in 1921 to pursue writing. He wrote poems, novels (ranging from realism to science fiction), as well as children's literature.

Childhood and adolescence

Pérochon was born on 24 February 1885 in Courlay, Deux-Sèvres at Tyran Farm. He was raised as a Protestant in a region with an unusual religious make-up, living alongside both Royalist Catholic "chouans" from the Vendée and dissidents from "the little church" which had refused the authority of the 1801 Concordat signed by Napoleon and Pope Pius VII.

Pérochon was very attached to his home region and to family values. He described in his stories his love for the common people, "les cherche-pain" (bread seekers) in his home region of the Gâtine at the beginning of the 20th century. In 1897, Pérochon became a student at l’Ecole Primaire Supérieure in Bressuire, eleven kilometers north of Courlay.

Adulthood

In 1900, Pérochon enrolled at l’Ecole Normale in Parthenay (35 kilometers southeast of Courlay), and he later became an assistant primary teacher at Courlay before becoming a teacher at l’Ecole Primaire Supérieure in Parthenay. He served in the military in 1905 under the 114th Infantry Regiment in Saint-Maixent.

In 1907, Pérochon married Vanda Houmeau, who was also a teacher. He then moved to Saint-Paul-en-Gâtine where his only daughter, Simone, was born in 1908. In 1908, his first work was published by Clouzot in Niort. In 1909, he was published for a second time and his first novel, Les creux de maisons, in which he evoked the image of "les cherche-pain," was also serialized in the newspaper l’Humanité in this year.