Alain - Fournier Alain - Fournier was the pseudonym of Henri Alban - Fournier ( 3 October 1886 – 22 September 1914 ) , a French author and soldier . He was the author of a single novel , " Le Grand Meaulnes " ( 1913 ) , which has been twice filmed and is considered a classic of French literature . Biography . Alain - Fournier was born in La Chapelle - d ' Angillon , in the Cher " département " , in central France , the son of a school teacher . He studied at the Lycée Lakanal in Sceaux , Hauts - de - Seine , near Paris , where he prepared for the entrance examination to the École Normale Supérieure , but without success . He then studied at the merchant marine school in Brest . At the Lycée Lakanal he met Jacques Rivière , and the two became close friends . In 1909 , Rivière married Alain - Fournier ' s younger sister Isabelle . He interrupted his studies in 1907 and from 1908 to 1909 he performed his military service . At this time he published some essays , poems and stories which were later collected and re - published under the name " Miracles " . Throughout this period he was mulling over what would become his celebrated novel , " Le Grand Meaulnes " . On the first of June 1905 , Ascension day , while he was taking a stroll along banks of the Seine he had met Yvonne Marie Elise Toussaint de Quiévrecourt , with whom he became deeply enamoured . The two spoke , but he did not manage to win her favours . The following year on the same day he waited for her at the same place , but she did not appear . That night he told Rivière , " She did not come . And even if she had , she would not have been the same " . They did not meet again until eight years later , when she was married with two children . Yvonne de Quiévrecourt would become Yvonne de Galais in his novel . He returned to Paris in 1910 and became a literary critic , writing for the " Paris - Journal " . There he met André Gide and Paul Claudel . In 1912 , he quit his job to become the personal assistant of the politician Casimir Perrier . " Le Grand Meaulnes " was finished in early 1913 , and was first published in the Nouvelle Revue Française ( from July to October 1913 ) , and then as a book . " Le Grand Meaulnes " was nominated for , but did not win , the Prix Goncourt . It is available in English in a widely - admired 1959 translation by Frank Davison for Oxford University Press under the title " The Lost Domain " . In 1914 , Alain - Fournier started work on a second novel , " Colombe Blanchet " , but this remained unfinished when he joined the army as a Lieutenant in August . He died fighting near Vaux - lès - Palameix ( Meuse ) one month later , on 22 September 1914 . His body remained unidentified until 1991 , at which time he was interred in the cemetery of Saint - Remy - la - Calonne . Most of the writing of Alain - Fournier was published posthumously : " Miracles " ( a volume of poems and essays ) in 1924 , his correspondence with Jacques Rivière in 1926 and his letters to his family in 1930 . His notes and sketches for " Colombe Blanchet " have also been published . Albin Schram manuscripts . A correspondence between Alain - Fournier and an unidentified woman was found in the Albin Schram Collection . It is a grateful letter for her introduction to Monsieur Hébrard and refers to his next work : AJRAF . In 1975 , AJRAF – " Association des amis de Jacques Rivière et d ' Alain - Fournier " ( Association of the Friends of Jacques Rivière and of Alain - Fournier ) was founded by Alain Rivière , the son of Jacques Rivière and nephew of Alain - Fournier to " promote knowledge of these two authors and to gather their friends together .