Edmond Eugène Alexis Rostand (April 1, 1868 - December 2, 1918), French poet and dramatist.

Rostand is associated with neo-romanticism, and is best-known for his play Cyrano de Bergerac. Rostand's romantic plays provided an alternative to the naturalistic theatre popular during the late 19th century. One of Rostand's works, The Romancers, has been adapted as the highly successful musical comedy The Fantasticks.

Edmond Rostand was born in Marseille, France, into a wealthy and cultured Provençal family. His father was an economist and a poet, a member of the Marseille Academy and the Institut de France. Rostand studied literature, history, and philosophy at the Collège Stanislas in Paris, France. In 1910, Rostand became the youngest writer to be elected to the Académie française.

In the 1900s, Rostand came to live in the Villa Arnaga in Cambo-les-Bains in the French Basque Country looking for a cure for his pleurisy. The house is now a heritage site and a museum of Rostand's life and Basque architecture and crafts. Rostand died in 1918, a victim of the Great Flu Epidemic, and is buried in the Cimetiere de Marseille.

Selected works

• Le Gant Rouge, 1888 - The Red Glove
• Les Musardises, 1890 - The Idlers
• Les Romanesques, 1894 - The Romantics
• La Princesse lointaine, 1895 - The Faraway Princess
• La Samariaine, 1897 - The Woman of Samaria
• Cyrano de Bergerac, 1897
• L'Aiglon, 1900
• Chantecler, 1910
• Œuvres Complètes, 7 vols., 1910-11
• La dernière nuit de Don Juan, 1921 - The Last Night of Don Juan
• Le Cantique de L'aile, 1922
• Le Vol de La Marseillaise, 1922
• Thèâtre, 1921-29

External link

• Project Gutenberg e-texts of Cyrano de Bergerac (http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/gutbook/author?name=Rostand%2c%20Edmond) - in French, and in English translation by Gladys Thomas and Mary F. Guillemard

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