Anne Golon
Golon (* 19th December 1921 in Toulon , France as Simone Changeux ; † 14. July 2017 in Versailles , France) was a French writer who with a series of novels about her heroine Angélique became known. With more than 150 million copies in 45 languages, “Angélique” is one of the greatest book successes of the 20th century.
Life
Anne Golon was born in the home of a naval captain who dreamed of publishing a book of colored air postcards. Anne did the coloring and discovered her first passion, painting. The second passion came into play at the age of 18, writing. She wrote her first book Au pays de derrière mes yeux (“A land behind my eyes”). Barely 20 years old, she had to flee Paris by bike from the invading German army during World War II . It made its way to Spain.
After the war, she first wrote under various pseudonyms for France 47 , which later became France Magazine . After receiving a literary prize for La Patrouille de Saint Innocent , she decided to travel to the Congo to collect material for a novel about the end of colonization. There she met the Russian aristocrat Vsevolod Sergejewitsch Golubinow (1903-1972), who had left his country during the 1917 revolution with his family members. He was a geologist and chemist by profession and spoke eleven languages. He earned his living investigating gold deposits in China, Indochina, Laos and, most recently, in Africa, where he met the young French journalist. They returned to France together and began to write their first, albeit less successful, books together. They wrote an animal story that was published by a Parisian publisher. The couple first called themselves Serge and Anne Golon. The publisher's director advised them to write historically adventurous women’s novels, which they realized with exceptional success.
Since Anne Golon was living in Versailles at the time , the novel was to take place in the time of the Sun King Louis XIV . After three years of study of the milieu and sources in Versailles and lengthy research in various places, her 900-page novel Angélique, Marquise des Anges was published in France in 1957 under the pseudonym Anne Golon . Since the novel was too extensive for the publisher, it was divided into two volumes. The second part was published under the title Angélique, le Chemin de Versailles .
Angélique
Novels
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The first publication was not in France, but in 1956 in Germany by Blanvalet under the title "Angélique". In the French version her husband is named as co-author with the pseudonym "Serge Golon", in the German version she is the sole author from the beginning.
The tremendous success led to a whole series of other novels about her heroine Angélique, who first has to marry the initially unloved Joffrey de Peyrac , loses him through intrigues, considers dead and later finds himself as a pirate in the Mediterranean.
Anne Golon continued to write about the world of Angélique until the last novel was published in 1985, “Angélique Triumphs”. The novels were published in 45 different languages and by 320 different editors. The success of her novels resulted in a flood of other historical novels by other authors.
Through the variety of adventures that her main character experiences, Anne Golon grants the reader an insight into almost all social classes in France at the time of the Sun King. As the daughter of a baron originally from the impoverished landed gentry, Angelique reached the court circles around Louis XIV as a countess and marquise, but also fell into the company of beggars and muggers and lived among craftsmen and petty bourgeoisie. Geographically and politically, the subject areas of the novel series are also broad: the battles between the king and the provincial nobility under the sign of emerging absolutism play just as much a role as the persecution of the Huguenots , the slave trade in the Mediterranean and the beginning colonization of the Caribbean islands and North America. Historical events and people are repeatedly linked to the fictional ones in the novels.
Film adaptations
After seven volumes of the saga had already appeared, the French film discovered the adventures of the young Angélique, and in 1964 the first novel was made into a film under the title "Angélique" ("Angélique, marquise des Anges").
Director Bernard Borderie decided to shoot the second part at the same time as the first film. In 1965 “Angélique, Part 2” was published. The leading role played the French Michèle Mercier , who has been inseparable from the character ever since. Angélique's husband, Joffrey de Peyrac , was portrayed by Robert Hossein . Three more films were to follow, in which the singer Jean-Claude Pascal as Osman Ferradji or the Robinson Crusoe actor Robert Hoffmann appeared.
Web links
- Literature by and about Anne Golon in the catalog of the German National Library
- Anne Golon in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Biography of Anne Golon (French)
Individual evidence
- ^ Anne Golon, auteure de la célèbre série littéraire Angélique, est morte Bfmtv.com com July 16, 2017. Accessed July 16, 2017.
- ^ French author Anne Golon dies - the novel series "Angélique" has sold millions of copies , deutschlandfunkkultur.de, July 16, 2017, accessed on July 17, 2017
- ↑ Russian Всеволод Серге́евич Голубинов
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Golon, Anne |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Simone Changeux (real name) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | French writer |
| DATE OF BIRTH | December 19, 1921 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Toulon , France |
| DATE OF DEATH | July 14, 2017 |
| Place of death | Versailles |