Hortense Dufour

Hortense Dufour (born 1946 in Saintes) is a French writer. She spent her childhood and youth in Marennes, Charente-Maritime. Dufour is the daughter of a French magistrate and an Italian musician. She spent three years in Madagascar and Comoros. A great traveler, she went to Europe, England, Ireland, United States, Maghreb countries, etc. In Paris, she studied modern literature. She was devoted to writing from childhood: "I always wrote," she said. "It fell on me as Grace" .. "A day without writing has always been for me a day that has not existed My blood has become ink." She was discovered at age 22 by publisher Jean-Jacques Pauvert. Dufour also participated in the reading committee of Éditions Robert Laffont and collaborated with the Bayard Presse group and other magazines in the form of articles. She is the mother of three children. She is the author of numerous novels and biographies devoted to Calamity Jane, la Comtesse de Ségur, Cleopatra, Marie-Antoinette, Nero, Colette, George Sand, Marie Stuart, Sissi, la Reine Margot, Joan of Arc and Madame de Pompadour. On this subject she declared: "Biographies are my permission to continue writing, novel is history, and history is also a novel." She was awarded the Grand prix des lectrices de Elle in 1978 for her novelLa Marie-Marraine", translated into several languages and adapted to the screen by Robert Enrico under the title L'Empreinte des géants. She received the Prix du Livre Inter in 1983 for her novel Le Bouchot. Sh…