Marcel Schwob (1867-1905) was a prolific Jewish French writer best known for his symbolic short stories and newspaper articles.

Marcel Schwob was born on August 23, 1867 in Chaville, Hauts-de-Seine, France, to parents George Schwob and Mathilde Cahun. As a child and young adult he enjoyed reading the works of Edgar Allan Poe and Robert Louis Stevenson, which would influence his writing later in life. His parents put a strong emphasis on education during his childhood, so as a child Schwob was multilingual and had many tutors and opportunities to further his studies. In 1881, Schwob studied at Lycée Louis-le-Grand in Paris, France and in 1884 he received his baccalauréat.

In 1885, Schwob served in the military and when he returned three years later he continued to take linguistic courses. He also began his literary career by working at the Archives Nationales in 1890 and contributing articles to French newspapers and magazines such as Le Phare and L'Echo de Paris. He published his first collection of stories titled Coeur double in 1891, and continued to publish short stories, books, and articles until 1895. The last few years of his life were marked by persistent illness, but Schwob still married Marguerite Moreno, a French actress, in 1900, and traveled to Samoa and throughout Europe in 1901 and 1904.

Schwob died on February 26, 1905 in Paris, France.

Maurice Barrès (1862-1923) was a French writer and politician, known for his extreme nationalism and anti-semitism.

Maurice Barrès was born on August 19, 1862, in Charmes-sur-Moselle, France. He went to Paris to study law, but changed his mind and began studying literature instead. While in Paris he published his trilogy, The Cult of the Ego. The books were individually published as Under the Eyes of the Barbarian (1888), A Free Man (1889), and The Garden of Bérénice (1891).

He began his political career at age twenty-seven by running successfully as deptuty of Nancy. His platform was stringently nationalistic and his political philosophies infused his literary works that he continued to publish throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. He traveled to Spain, Italy, Greece, and Asia and these travels inspired his 1894 book Of Blood, Pleasure, and Death. He was elected to the French Academy in 1906.

Barrès died on December 5, 1923 in Paris, France.