Emile Baumann

Born in Lyon in 1868, he came from a family of Lutheran background that had converted to Catholicism. He later became associated with the Catholic Literary Renaissance in France, a movement that also included major writers such as François Mauriac and Paul Claudel.

His work mixed novels, essays, memoir, and religious writing. He was noted in particular for the seriousness of his Catholic imagination, and he received the Prix Balzac in 1922 for Job le Prédestiné. Among English-language readers, he is especially remembered for Saint Paul.

Baumann died in 1941. Some library records list him as 1868–1941, while other catalogs and editions give 1868–1942; the 1942 date often reflects posthumous publication rather than his year of death.