HEMON, LOUIS. - Novelist, b. at Brest on 12 Oct. 1880, d. at Chapleau (Canada) on 18 July 1913. He settled in the forests of Peribonka in Canada, living the life of the lumberjacks and closely observing their surroundings and customs.
The fruit of this study was the novel Maria Chapdelaine (Montréal 1916). Now regarded as one of the masterpieces of modern French literature, it initially met with little success when published in the Temps. Only when Daniel Halévy republished it in his Cahiers verts did critics and the public recognize the value of the work. In it they discovered Canada in its traditions, in its profoundly Catholic character, in its attachment to the mother country, and in its French sentiments. The poetry of a land separated from France for more than a century, yet still spiritually alive through its past, pervades the entire book.