1897 in France

Events from the year 1897 in France.

Incumbents

Events

4 May – Bazar de la Charité Fire.
9 December – First issue of the feminist newspaper La Fronde is published by Marguerite Durand.
28 December – The play Cyrano de Bergerac, by Edmond Rostand, premieres in Paris.
Alexandre Darracq begins manufacture of motor vehicles at A. Darracq et Cie in the Paris suburb of Suresnes.
Women are admitted to study at the École des Beaux-Arts.
At Giverny, Claude Monet begins painting his Water Lilies series, which will continue until the end of his life.

Literature

Births

January to June

21 January – René Iché, sculptor
30 March – Raymond Borderie, film producer
4 April – Pierre Fresnay, actor
1 May – Aimée Antoinette Camus, botanist
27 May – Lucien Cailliet, composer, conductor, arranger and clarinetist

July to September

3 July – Charles Tillon, politician
12 July – Maurice Tabard, surrealist photographer
25 July – André Muffang, chess master
2 August – Philippe Soupault, poet, novelist, critic and political activist
15 August – Ludovic Arrachart, aviator
19 August – Norbert Casteret, caver and adventurer
10 September – Georges Bataille, writer
12 September
* Pierre Courant, politician
* Irène Joliot-Curie, scientist, shared the Nobel Prize for chemistry in 1935
13 September – Michel Saint-Denis, actor, theatre director, and drama theorist

October to December

3 October – Louis Aragon, poet and novelist
16 October – Louis de Cazenave, at the time of his death, the oldest French poilu still alive
18 October – Martha Desrumeaux, militant communist and member of the French Resistance
24 November – François Ducaud-Bourget, priest
27 November – André Couder, optician and astronomer
3 December – André Marie, politician and Prime Minister of France
7 December – Lazare Ponticelli, last surviving official French veteran of the First World War
19 December – Louis Darquier de Pellepoix, Commissioner for Jewish Affairs under the Vichy Régime
20 December – Jacques de Bernonville, collaborationist and senior police officer in the Vichy regime
25 December – Noël Delberghe, water polo player and Olympic medallist

Undated

Georges Périnal, cinematographer

Deaths

13 January – Charles Brun, naval engineer
20 March – Augustin Marie Morvan, physician, politician and writer
18 May – François-Louis Français, painter
30 May – Jeanne Sylvanie Arnould-Plessy, actress
19 June – Louis Brière de l'Isle, Military officer and colonial governor
5 July – Edmond-Frederic Le Blant, archaeologist and historian
6 July – Henri Meilhac, dramatist and opera librettist
20 September – Louis Pierre Mouillard, aeronautical engineer
30 September – Thérèse de Lisieux, Roman Catholic Carmelite nun, canonised as a saint
6 November – Edouard Deldevez, violinist, conductor and composer
14 November – Thomas W. Evans, dentist
28 November – Léonard-Léopold Forgemol de Bostquénard, general
6 December – Oscar Bardi de Fourtou, politician
16 December – Alphonse Daudet, novelist