Birth of Sully Prudhomme

Sully Prudhomme was born on 16 March 1839 in 10ᵗʰ arrondissement of Paris. A French poet and essayist, Sully Prudhomme was born Rene Francois Armand Prudhomme and trained as an engineer and lawyer before devoting himself to writing. His early poems in the Parnassian style, such as the collection Stances et poemes, were noted for their elegance, and he later turned to philosophical verse on science and moral questions, as in La Justice and Le Bonheur. He was elected to the Academie francaise in 1881. In 1901 he became the first winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, a choice that has often been criticized in light of the writers who were passed over, such as Tolstoy.

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