Albert Camus biography

Born November 7th, 1913 in Algeria son of French 'pied-noir' settlers Camus grew up in poverty in the proletarian neighbourhood of Belcourt in Algiers. His natural talent was spotted by teacher Louis Germain who helped the young Camus win a high school scholarship. Camus would later dedicate his 1957 Nobel Prize acceptance speech to Germain. While at school Camus developed a love of football and played well in goal. He wanted to play professionally but tuberculosis, a disease that would plague him for life, ended these dreams.

Camus Bio - early influences

After the first attack he spent a year recuperating with his uncle Gustave Acault. Acault was a butcher, owned his own shop and was relatively well off. He was also an autodidact and well known about town for his intellect and wit. With the support of his uncle, Camus was free to develop his love of literature.

Another man to have a profound influence of Camus at this time was his high school philosophy teacher Jean Grenier. The author of Islands (1933) and Mediterranean Inspiriations (1941), Grenier introduced Camus to the philosophy of Bergson and Nietzsche. Grenier later joined the faculty at the University of Algiers. He was there at the same time as Camus, who joined the university as a student in 1933. Grenier would help persuade Camus that he should be active in the Algerian Communist Party.

Camus met Simone Hie, a beautiful bohemian actress, in 1932. She was engaged to his friend Max-Pol Fouchet who was then leader of the Federation of Young Socialists in Algeria. Two years later Camus and Hie were married. It was a difficult marriage, Simone had a drug problem addicted to morphine since the age of fourteen. She would embarrass him in public and sleep with his friends. The pair divorced in 1940. They stayed in contact with Camus sending her money when she needed it.

Camus Bio - early politics

Uncle Acault had already introduced Camus to anarchist ideas and Jean Grenier would introduce revolutionary syndicalism and the idea of joining the Communist Party. Grenier believed that the most effective thing Camus could do with his socialist sympathies was to join with other intellectuals already working for the Party. Camus was never a Marxist and was against the ideas of Lenin and Stalin. However, it was true that to work with other socialist intellectuals it would have to be through the Algerian Communist Party. He would later be expelled from the Party for his postion of support for native Algerian nationalism. Native Algerians had little or no rights in Algeria at the time and were treated at best like second class citizens. At first, the communists were commited to the Algerian Nationalist cause but then back-peddled when Stalin realised he would need an ally in France if the Germans were to attack.

In 1938, Camus became a reporter for a recently founded left-wing newspaper Alger Republicain . He was responsible for covering Algiers. This job was useful to Camus in two ways; he now had a regular salaried income and a political platform (something lacking since his expulsion from the Communist Party). As well as writing reviews of contemporary literature, such as Sartre's Nausee and Le Mur , he published a series of articles on a falsely imprisoned adviser for an Arab insurance company (securing his release) and eleven articles on the famine in Kabylia.

Camus Bio - the war years

The Alger Republicain closed when the Second World War broke out. It was replaced, briefly, with Le Soir Republicain edited by Camus and Pascal Pia. Le Soir Republicain closed in 1940, Camus moved to Paris to work for Paris-Soir as a typesetter. He did not enjoy the job. Paris depressed Camus, he barely knew anyone there and the content of the paper, which was interested only in crime and scandal, would hardly interest a man like Camus.

In Paris Camus found time to persue his writing. The Stranger was published in July 1942 and The Myth of Sisyphus was brought out three months later in October. These books brought Camus notoriety within literary circles, from 1944, Camus reached his widest audience by writing for and editing Combat , the underground newspaper of the Resistance. After the Liberation, Camus continued as the editor of Combat and put on a production of The Misunderstanding (Le Malentendu). 1945 saw the first meeting of Albert Camus and Jean-Paul Sartre.

Camus Bio - the post war years

Camus had married for the second time in 1940, to Francine Faure. 1945 saw the birth of his twin children, Jean and Catherine. In the same year Caligula was performed for the first time in Paris. In 1946/7 Camus was well-received in a lecture tour of the United States. 1947 saw the publication of Camus' best-selling novel, The Plague (La Peste). A year later Camus produced State of Siege (L'Etat de Siége) and the following year he embarked on a lecture tour of South America and The Just Assasins (Les Justes) is performed in Paris.

Camus endured new and worrying attacks of tuberculosis in 1949-51. These weren't just times of physical pain for Camus, in 1951, Camus publishes The Rebel (L'Homme Révolté) to great controversy. He, and is work is heavy criticized by Sartre and his magazine Modern Times (Les Temps Modernes) . Camus severed relations with Sartre in 1952, the two never made up. The criticism hurt Camus and he fell into a depression. 1956 he publishes The Fall (La Chute) , his reaction to the fallout of The Rebel . Sartre praises the work, he considers it a return to the 'old Camus'. Camus was awarded The Nobel Prize for Literature in 1957. In the same year he publishes the selection of short stories Exile and The Kingdom (L'Exil et le Royaume).

Camus was killed in a car accident on January 4th 1960. His unfinished novel, The First Man (Le premier Homme) was in his briefcase, found in the wreckage. The First Man was published in 1995. This was the second of Camus' works to be published posthumously, A Happy Death (La Mort heureuse) was released in 1970.