HEMON, LOUIS. – Novelist, b. at Brest on 12 Oct. 1880, d. at Chapleau (Canada) on 8 July 1913. He settled in the forests of Peribonka in Canada, leading the life of a lumberjack and carefully observing the environment and customs.
The fruit of this study was the novel *Maria Chapdelaine* (Montréal 1916). Today considered among the masterpieces of modern French literature, it initially met with little success when published in *Le Temps*. Only when Daniel Halévy republished it in his *Cahiers verts* did critics and the public recognize the work’s value. In it, one discovered Canada in its traditions, in its deeply Catholic character, in its attachment to the motherland, in its French sentiments. The poetry of a land separated from France for over a century yet still spiritually alive with its past fills the entire book.