Frédéric Mistral
Frédéric Mistral, writer and lexicographer, was born in Maillane on 8 September 1830 and died there on 25 March 1914. An emblematic figure of the region, he was one of the founding members of the Félibrige, an association, but above all a cultural movement, working for the preservation of the language and traditions of the Oc language countries. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1904 for Mireille, a major work, composed in 1859, in verse and in the Occitan language. The writer recounts the thwarted love affairs of two young Provencal men, Vincent and Mireille, in the Provence of the time. At the end of the 19th century, he created the Muséon Arlaten, a museum dedicated to the ethnography of Provence and which contains numerous collections representative of the customs and history of the Arles region.
Marie Mauron
Marie Mauron, whose real name was Marie-Antoinette Roumanille, was born in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence on April 5, 1896, into a modest family. She died on October 31, 1986, in the same town. The one nicknamed the Colette provençale produced more than a hundred books: novels, tales, legends... always published in both languages, Provençal and French. While the majority of her works celebrate her beloved country, her most recent writings are, on the other hand, tinged with militancy. The writer protests against the forces that disfigure the country: promoters, speculators...
Marie Mauron was elected Majoral of the Félibrige in 1969.
Yvan Audouard
Yvan Audouard was born on 27 February 1914 in Saigon and died on 21 March 2004 in Paris. Although he was born and died far from Provence, he was nonetheless a cantor of the latter. Indeed, from his childhood spent in Arles and then Nîmes, he kept a great tenderness for this country. Journalist, writer, he published many books, including Le Sabre de mon père, in 1999, in which he appeals to his childhood memories, between Arles and Nîmes. He will also be a dialogue writer for films interpreted by Fernandel, Lino Ventura or Eddie Constantine. He also wrote the screenplay for D'où viens-tu Johnny, starring Johnny Halliday.
Alphonse Daudet
Alphonse Daudet was born on 13 May 1840 in Nîmes and died in Paris on 16 December 1897. Almost all schoolchildren have, at one time or another, studied the famous Lettres de mon moulin, a collection of Provençal short stories, and many of them have visited the said mill, in Fontvieille. However, the author stayed only one year in the village and never lived in the mill. Nevertheless, even though Daudet spent most of his life in Paris, he remains, in the collective mind, the archetype of the Provençal writer. Some of his characters, such as Tartarin de Tarascon, became so famous that they can no longer be dissociated from local history.
