Victor-Marie Hugo (26 February 1802 – 22 May 1885) was a French poet, playwright, novelist, essayist, visual artist, statesman,
human rights activist and exponent of the Romantic movement in France. In France, Hugo's literary fame rests not only upon
his novels, but also upon his poetic and dramatic achievements.
Jules Gabriel Verne (February 8, 1828 – March 24, 1905) was a French author who helped pioneer the science-fiction genre.
He is best known for his novels A Journey to the Center of the Earth (1864), From the Earth to the Moon (1865), Twenty Thousand
Leagues under the Sea (1869–1870), Around the World in Eighty Days (1873) and The Mysterious Island (1875).
Alexandre Dumas, père, born Dumas Davy de la Pailleterie (24 July 1802 – 5 December 1870) was a French writer, best known
for his numerous historical novels of high adventure which have made him one of the most widely read French authors in the
world. Many of his novels, including The Count of Monte Cristo, The Three Musketeers, Twenty Years After, and The Vicomte
de Bragelonne were serialized. He also wrote plays and magazine articles and was a prolific correspondent.
Émile François Zola (2 April 1840 – 29 September 1902) was an influential French writer, the most important exemplar of the
literary school of naturalism, an important contributor to the development of theatrical naturalism, and a major figure in
the political liberalisation of France and in the exoneration of the falsely accused and convicted army officer Alfred Dreyfus.
Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust (10 July 1871 – 18 November 1922) was a French novelist, essayist, and critic,
best known as the author of À la recherche du temps perdu (in English, In Search of Lost Time; earlier translated as Remembrance
of Things Past), a monumental work of twentieth-century fiction published in seven parts from 1913 to 1927.
Eugène Henri Paul Gauguin (7 June 1848 – 8 May 1903) was a leading Post-Impressionist painter. His bold experimentation with
colouring led directly to the Synthetist style of modern art while his expression of the inherent meaning of the subjects
in his paintings, under the influence of the cloisonnist style, paved the way to Primitivism and the return to the pastoral.
He was also an influential exponent of wood engraving and woodcuts as art forms.
