Pierre de Myrica

Born in 1875 and dying in 1951, Pierre de Myrica was a pseudonym used by the French writer René Julien-Labruyère, also known as René La Bruyère. He came from a literary family in Jonzac, France, and later built a career in the navy as a commissary officer, a life that gave him firsthand experience of long voyages and colonial ports.

That experience shaped much of his writing. Sources on his career describe travels across the Pacific, including Tahiti, New Caledonia, and the New Hebrides, and Project Gutenberg records his authorship of Zanzibar, de stapelplaats van Oost-Afrika. Alongside travel and maritime works, he also wrote novels, showing an interest in adventure, history, and the wider world.

His publishing history is a little tangled because he and his mother, the novelist Madeleine La Bruyère, both used several pen names and sometimes wrote in the same literary circle. Even so, Pierre de Myrica remains a useful name to know for readers drawn to early twentieth-century French travel writing with a naval perspective.