17 Facts About Edmond Rostand

Edmond Eugene Alexis Rostand was a French poet and dramatist.

Edmond Rostand is associated with neo-romanticism and is known best for his 1897 play Cyrano de Bergerac.

Edmond Rostand was born in Marseille, France, into a wealthy and cultured Provencal family.

Edmond Rostand's father was an economist, a poet who translated and edited the works of Catullus, and a member of the Marseille Academy and the Institut de France.

Edmond Rostand studied literature, history, and philosophy at the College Stanislas in Paris, France.

When Edmond Rostand was twenty years old, his first play, a one-act comedy, Le Gant rouge, was performed at the Cluny Theatre, 24 August 1888, but it was almost unnoticed.

In 1890, Edmond Rostand published a volume of poems called Les Musardises.

Edmond Rostand considered himself a poet, whether writing plays or poetry.

Bernhardt, undeterred, asked Edmond Rostand to write another play for her.

Edmond Rostand created the role of Photine in La Samaritaine, a Biblical drama in three scenes adapted from the gospel story of the woman of Samaria.

Edmond Rostand felt satisfied that he had proven to the public that he was something more than a writer of comedies.

Cyrano de Bergerac had been a boyhood hero of Edmond Rostand, who loved his idealism and courage.

In 1901, Edmond Rostand became the youngest writer ever to be elected to the Academie francaise.

Edmond Rostand relocated to Cambo-les-bains, in the Basque Pyrenees, in 1903 for health reasons.

When he died prematurely at fifty years old, Edmond Rostand was still writing plays.

Edmond Rostand was married to the poet and playwright Rosemonde-Etienette Gerard who, in 1890, published Les Pipeaux: a volume of verse commended by the Academy.

Edmond Rostand died in 1918, a victim of the flu pandemic, and is buried in the Cimetiere de Marseille.