Andrée Viollis (1870–1950)

Andrée Viollis was born Françoise-Caroline Claudius Jacquet de La Verryère to a cultured middle-class French family. She studied in England and earned an arts degree from the Sorbonne. She made her debut as a journalist with the feminist newspaper La Fronde. In 1898, she married Gustave Téry, a professor of philosophy, with whom she had two children before divorcing. She remarried in 1905 to Henri d'Ardenne Tizac, a museum curator and novelist under the pseudonym Jean Viollis, with whom she had two more children. She took the name Andrée Viollis and became one of the most famous journalist of the interwar years, She covered many diverse beats including sports, major trials, politics, and investigative reporting. For the French daily Le Petit Parisien, she served as a war correspondent on conflicts and anti-colonial movements in Afghanistan, India, China, Japan, Indochina, and Tunisia. During the Popular Front in France, she joined anti-fascist intellectuals and championed the cause of the Spanish Republic. In 1938, she joined the editorial staff of the Communist newspaper Ce Soir led by Louis Aragon and Jean-Richard Bloch. She was involved in the French Resistance in Lyon during World War II. She was the author of some 18 books from 1913 to 1948, including four novels, a biography of Madame de Lafayette, and other nonfiction works, including Indochina SOS, first published in 1935 with a preface by André Malraux.