Jean Follain

Jean Follain (29 August 1903 – 10 March 1971) was a French author, poet and corporate lawyer. In the early days of his career he was a member of the "Sagesse" group. Follain was a friend of Max Jacob, André Salmon, Jean Paulhan, Pierre Pussy, Armen Lubin, and Pierre Reverdy. He was a contributor to many journals, such as La Nouvelle Revue française, Commerce, Europe, Le Journal des Poètes and Les Cahiers des Saisons. In 1970, he was awarded the Grand Prize of Poetry from L'Académie française for his life's work. A small part of his archives is conserved at the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Saint-Lô in France.Prix littéraire Jean Follain de la Ville de Saint Lô is a literary award honouring his name and contributions to French literature. He studied law in Paris and became a judge. He died in 1971 in a car accident.

Jean Follain was born in the small town of Canisy (province of la Manche), south of Saint-Lô, where he spent his childhood. He attended a middle school (Collège, the title of a later prose work) where his father was professor of the Natural Sciences. In 1919 he went to Leeds in a vain attempt to improve his English, and in 1921 he began studying law at Faculté de Caen. For health reasons he was exempted from military service.

In 1927 he passed his bar exams in Paris and started attending the meetings of the group "Sagesse" ("Wisdom") where he made the acquaintance of André Salmon, Pierre Reverdy, Pierre Mac Orlan and Max Jacob. In 1933 he published his first collection with Eugène Guillevic and Pierre Albert-Birot. In 1934 he married painter Madeleine Dinès, a daughter of the Nabi artist Maurice Denis. In 1939 he received the Mallarmé Prize. Jean Follain received the Prix Blumenthal in 1941, awarded to poets who refused to collaborate with the Vichy Government.

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