63 Facts About Georges Simenon

Georges Joseph Christian Simenon was a Belgian writer, most famous for his fictional detective Jules Maigret.

Desire Georges Simenon worked in an accounting office at an insurance company and had married Henriette in April 1902.

Georges Simenon was either born at 11.30 pm on Thursday 12 February 1903, or just after midnight on Friday 13th.

The Georges Simenon family was of Walloon and Flemish ancestry, settling in the Belgian Limburg in the seventeenth century.

Georges Simenon's brother Christian was born in September 1906 and eventually became their mother's favourite child, which Georges Simenon resented.

The young Georges Simenon idolised his father and later claimed to have partly modelled Maigret's temperament on him.

At the age of three, Georges Simenon learned to read at the Ecole Guardienne run by the Sisters of Notre Dame.

Georges Simenon later said that the war years provided some of the happiest times of his life.

In October 1914, Georges Simenon began his studies at the College Saint-Louis, a Jesuit high school.

Georges Simenon excelled at French, but his marks in other subjects declined.

Georges Simenon read widely in the Russian, French and English classics, frequently played truant, and turned to petty theft in order to buy pastries and other war time luxuries.

In 1917, the Georges Simenon family moved to a former post office building in the rue des Maraichers.

Georges Simenon witnessed scenes of violent retribution against residents of Liege accused of collaboration which stayed with him for the rest of his life.

Georges Simenon described these scenes in Pedigree and Les trois crimes de mes amis.

In January 1919, the 15-year-old Georges Simenon took a job as a junior reporter at the Gazette de Liege, a right-wing Catholic newspaper edited by Joseph Demarteau.

In May 1920, Georges Simenon began publishing short fiction in the Gazette.

Georges Simenon wrote two other novels while working at the Gazette, but these were never published.

In June 1919, Georges Simenon had been introduced into a group of young artists and bohemians which called itself "Le Caque".

Georges Simenon was one of the last people to see Kleine alive and was deeply affected by his suicide, later referring to the incident in Les trois crimes de mes amis and Le pendu de St Pholien.

Now in Paris, Georges Simenon found a menial job with a far-right political group headed by the writer Binet-Valmer.

The newly-weds moved to Paris where Regine tried to establish herself as a painter while Georges Simenon resumed work for Binet-Valmer and sent articles to the Revue Sincere of Brussels for which he was the Paris correspondent.

Georges Simenon wrote short stories for popular magazines, but sales were sporadic.

Colette advised him to make his work "less literary" which Georges Simenon took to mean that he should use simple descriptions and a limited stock of common words.

Georges Simenon followed her advice and within a year became one of the paper's regular contributors.

Now with a steady income from his writing, Georges Simenon left the Marquis' employ in 1924 and returned to Paris where he and Regine found an apartment in the fashionable Place des Vosges.

Georges Simenon was writing and selling short stories at the rate of 80 typed pages a day, and now turned his hand to pulp novels.

Georges Simenon began calling her "Boule", and she was to become his lover and part of the Georges Simenon household under that name for the next 39 years.

Georges Simenon began an affair with Josephine Baker in 1926 or 1927, and became her part-time assistant and editor of Josephine Baker's Magazine.

Georges Simenon had begun contributing detective stories to a new magazine called Detective and continued to publish popular novels, mainly with the publishers Fayard.

Georges Simenon began working on the latter novel in September 1929 when the Ostrogoth was undergoing repairs in the Dutch city of Delfzijl, and the city is celebrated as the birthplace of Georges Simenon's most famous character.

On his return to Paris in April 1930, Georges Simenon completed Pietr-le-Letton, the first novel in which commissioner Maigret of the Paris mobile crime brigade was a fully developed character.

Georges Simenon wrote 19 Maigret novels by the end of 1933, and the series eventually sold 500 million copies.

Georges Simenon visited other African colonies and wrote a series of articles highly critical of colonialism.

Georges Simenon drew on his African experience in novels such as Le Coup de Lune and 45 a l'ombre.

Georges Simenon called the Maigret novels "semi-literary" and he wanted to establish himself as a serious writer.

Georges Simenon stated his aim was to win the Nobel Prize for Literature by 1947.

Georges Simenon was in a cafe in La Rochelle when France declared war on Germany on 3 September 1939.

Georges Simenon began working on his memoirs Je me souviens, intended as a letter to his son from a father who would soon be dead.

Georges Simenon returned to writing Maigret stories and novels, completing two in 1940 and three in 1941.

Georges Simenon wrote longer novels such as Pedigree, a fictionalised reworking of Je me souviens.

In January 1945, Georges Simenon was placed under house arrest by the police and the French Forces of the Interior on suspicion of collaboration.

Georges Simenon went to Paris in May 1945 while Marc and Boule returned to their house near La Rochelle with Regine.

The rest of the family soon joined him in Paris and Georges Simenon used his contacts to secure the required travel documents for America.

Georges Simenon continued to write quickly, working from 6 am to 9 am daily, and averaging 4,500 words a day.

Denyse became pregnant in early 1949, and Georges Simenon asked Regine for a divorce.

Georges Simenon wrote two Maigret novels and two romans durs during his first six months on the French Riviera, but was still searching for a permanent home.

Georges Simenon continued to produce novels at a rate of three to five a year at Enchandens, including two of his most notable, Le president and Les anneaux de Bicetre.

Georges Simenon continued to work steadily, completing three to four books a year from 1965 to 1971, including the important works Le petit saint and Le chat.

In February 1973, Georges Simenon announced that he was retiring from writing.

Georges Simenon produced no new fiction from that date, but he dictated 21 volumes of memoirs.

Georges Simenon underwent a brain operation in 1984, but made a full recovery.

Georges Simenon died on 4 September 1989, following a fall.

Georges Simenon's published works include 192 novels written under his own name, over 200 novels written under various pseudonyms, four autobiographies and 21 volumes of memoirs.

Georges Simenon's novels had sold over 500 million copies by the time of his death, making him one of the highest selling novelists in history.

Georges Simenon's fiction is often classified into his early pseudonymous popular novels, the last of which was written in 1933; his fiction featuring police commissioner Jules Maigret ; and his 117 literary novels which he called romans durs.

The first Maigret novel published under Georges Simenon's name was Pietr-le-Letton which was serialised in 1930.

Georges Simenon stated that his Maigret novels were designed to be read by people of average education in a single sitting.

Georges Simenon stated that his Maigret stories often deal with more serious themes that those of his other novels.

Georges Simenon suspended his writing of Maigret stories in 1933 in order to concentrate on the literary novels he called romans durs.

Georges Simenon compares Simenon's preoccupation with the "little people" with that of Balzac.

Georges Simenon's most acclaimed novels include Monsieur Hire's Engagement, The Man who Watched the Trains Go By, Monsieur Monde Vanishes, Act of Passion, The Snow was Dirty, Red Lights, and The Little Saint.

Unless otherwise specified, the sources for the French title and publication date are Bernard Alavoine, Trudee Young, Tout Georges Simenon and Tout Maigret.

Georges Simenon's work has been widely adapted to cinema and television.