author
Charles Durand
1863–1907
A French writer from the Norman port town of Fécamp, he left behind maritime fiction shaped by the world of the sea. His best-known surviving work, De profundis! Episode Maritime, carries the drama, danger, and emotion of life on the coast.
1 Audiobook
De profundis! Episode Maritime
by Charles Durand
About the author
Born in Fécamp, France, on August 2, 1863, Charles Durand was a French-language author who also died there on July 4, 1907. The basic facts of his life are preserved in the Bibliothèque nationale de France authority record, but little widely available biographical detail seems to survive.
What does remain points clearly to his literary world: the sea. Durand is associated with De profundis! Episode Maritime, a short French work later preserved by Project Gutenberg, and the title alone suggests the strong maritime setting that fits a writer from a fishing and seafaring town like Fécamp.
Because so little personal information is readily documented online, Durand is best approached through his writing rather than through a full life story. Even so, he stands as one of those lesser-known authors whose work offers a small but vivid window into regional French literature at the end of the 19th century.