Birth of Frédéric Mistral

Frédéric Mistral was born on 8 September 1830 in Maillane. A French writer from Provence, Mistral was the central figure of the Felibrige, a movement founded in 1854 to revive the Provencal language and culture. His epic poem Mireio, published in 1859, brought him fame and was set to music by Charles Gounod as the opera Mireille. He spent years compiling the Treasure of the Felibrige, a large dictionary of the Provencal language. He received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1904, which he shared with the Spanish dramatist Jose Echegaray, and he used the prize money to found an ethnographic museum in Arles, the Museon Arlaten.

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