Michel Corday

Born in Paris on September 12, 1869, Michel Corday was the pen name of Louis-Édouard Pollet. He studied at the École Polytechnique, then followed a military path before becoming known as a novelist and man of letters. He died on January 12, 1937, in Serbonnes, in France’s Yonne department.

Corday wrote across several genres, but he is especially remembered for his novels and for the diaries he kept during the First World War. Those wartime writings are often noted for their frank, critical, and deeply pacifist tone, giving readers a direct sense of how he saw the conflict from inside his own era.

Later readers of fantastic and speculative fiction have also kept his name alive because of works such as La Flamme éternelle and Ciel Rose. Taken together, his books show a writer interested not just in events, but in the moral and emotional pressures that shape ordinary lives.