Chamson, André (1900-83). French historian, art critic, and novelist, who was also an important civil servant and an active participant in the Resistance [see Occupation and Resistance]. His literary output ranged from novels (Roux le bandit, 1925; Les Hommes de la route, 1927), to historical essays (Clio, 1929), to writings on art (La Peinture française au musée du Louvre, 1948), to works of broader brush (Le Puits des miracles, 1945). His Cévenol Protestant origins, the Mont Aigoual, and its surrounding region loom large in his early fictional imagination which is sturdily realistic.
[David Steel]
