Paul Guth

Paul Guth (5 March 1910 – 29 October 1997) was a French humorist, journalist and writer, and the President of the Académie des provinces françaises. A novelist, essayist, columnist, memoirist, historian, pamphleteer, he distinguished himself in every genre with a combination of sensitivity and savagery. He wrote about fifty works on various subjects, ranging from straight history to personal anecdotes, never holding back in criticism of contemporary failings. Paul Guth was born in Ossun on 5 March 1910 to a family of modest means. His parents used to live in Villeneuve-sur-Lot, but his mother, a bigourdane, gave birth to him at her family's hometown of Ossun, in the canton of Hautes-Pyrénées. Guth began his education at Villeneuve-sur-Lot. He studied literature in Paris, where he passed his agrégation in 1933, and pursued an ordinary academic career until the Second World War. He was a teacher for ten years at schools in Dijon and Rouen, as well as at Janson de Sailly in Paris. After the war, Guth devoted himself to literature and journalism, including radio. He won the Prix du Théâtre in 1946 for Fugues. In 1953, Guth published Les Mémoires d'un Naïf ("The Memoirs of a Naïf"), a bestseller which was to be the first in a series of seven volumes. It tells the story of the Naïf ("Simpleton"), a teacher of French who hides a grandiose imagination beneath a naïve exterior. The series comprises Les Mémoires d'un Naïf (1953 – Prix Courteline), Le Naïf aux quarante enfants ("Forty Kids and a Naïf", 1955), Le Naïf locataire ("The Naïf as Lodger", 1956 – Grand prix du roman de l'Académie française), Le Naïf sous les drapeaux ("Naïf at Arms", 1964), Le mariage du Naïf ("The Naïf's Wedding", 1965), Le Naïf amoureux ("The Naïf in Love", 1968) and finally Saint Naïf (1970). The works of Paul Guth include a romantic four-volume series, Jeanne la Mince, published between 1960 and 1969: Jeanne la mince, Jeanne la mince à Paris, Jeanne la mince et l'amour, and Jeanne la mince et la jalousie.