Pierre de Coulevain (1853–1927)

Pierre de Coulevain was the pseudonym of Jeanne Philomène Laperche, born in Bordeaux, France, to parents who were hoteliers. In 1879, after the death of her father, she moved with her mother and brother to Paris. In 1882, she married a friend from Bordeaux, Jean Fernand-Lafargue, the novelist, poet and playwright. Under the pseudonym Hélène Favre Coulevain, she published her first novel Noblesse américaine (American Nobility), which won the Prix Montyon in 1899. In 1901 she published her second novel, Ève victorieuse (Eve Victorious) under the final pseudonym of Pierre de Coulevain and again won the Prix Montyon. In 1903, after her husband died and her son had left home, she enrolled in the École Forestière de Nancy, the French National School of Forestry. She then decided to travel and live "like a bird on the branch." In 1904, she published her third novel, Sur la branche. In 1906, she published L'Île inconnue, mœurs anglaises (The Unknown Island), which she said was a diary written during a few months' stay in England. Her son René was killed during World War I, leaving a young widow and two little twin girls, after which she wrote nothing except a children's book, L'Épreuve de Georges (The Trial of George). She served on the jury of the Prix Femina from its creation in 1904 until 1920.