Henri Pourrat (7 May 1887 in Ambert (Puy de Dome) – 16 July 1959 in Ambert) was a French writer and anthropologist who collected the oral literature of the Auvergne.
After attending the College d'Ambert and the Lycee Henri IV in Paris, Henri Pourrat was destined to pursue a career in agriculture and was admitted at the Institut National Agronomique Paris-Grignon in 1905. However, due to an infection with tuberculosis, he sought a more healthy climate in the valleys of Monts Dore and in the Livradois and Forez regions, which he would roam in countless hikes over the next fifty years.
He lived in a house at Vernet-la-Varenne. The enforced leisure, spent with reading and walking, developed in him the need to write. The work of Henri Pourrat would eventually comprise hundreds of books, including novels, biographies, collections of stories and poems. From 1916 on he and his brother Paul were friends with the young (1901–1971). In 1948 he permanently settled in the sub-prefecture Ambert of the Puy-de-Dôme department from which he originated.
In 1926 he received an honorary degree of the University of Dublin. He obtained special recognition by the literary critics for his monumental The Valor, pranks and adventures of Jasper of the mountains (4 volumes, 1921–1931 and final edition in one volume by Albin Michel), for which he was awarded the Prize Figaro (1921, Volume 1) and the Grand Prix du Roman of the Académie française (1931 overall). In 1941 he received the Prix Goncourt for Vent de Mars and in the same year obtained the Muteau Prize of the French Academy for his historical book Man with a spade.
He occasionally contributed to Le Courrier français.