Mireille Best

Stephanie Schechner (Widener University)

Ed. by Hugo Azerad, University of Cambridge
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.5.2.07: French Writing and Culture: Postwar and Contemporary, 1945-present.
Vol. editors: Kate Averis (University of Western Australia), Hugo Azerad (University of Cambridge), Patrick ffrench (King's College London), Edward Forman (University of Bristol), Akane Kawakami (Birkbeck, University of London), Siobhán McIlvanney (King's College London), Sinan Richards (King's College London), Tim Unwin (University of Bristol), David Williams (University of Sheffield)

Dates

Born 4 Jun 1943
Died 16 Jan 2005
Activity 1980-1995

Places

Born in France
Active in France

Cultural Identities

LGBTQ

Activities

Primary

Novelist
Story-writer

Resources

Best's Works

Save to Bookshelf

Mireille Lemarchand (pseudonym Mireille Best; born 4 June 1943; died 16 January 2005), story writer and novelist, was known for her singular prose style that marked her as a literary heir of the French New Novel. A pioneer in that her protagonists were working class lesbians, Mireille Best received critical acclaim in the French, German, and Dutch press, but is not widely known in academic circles. Published by the prestigious French publishing house Gallimard, Best wrote four volumes of short stories (

Les Mots de hasard

[

Chance Words

](1980),

Le Méchant petit jeune homme

[

The Naughty Little Boy

] (1983),

Une Extrême attention

[

An Extreme Attention

] (1985),

Orphéa trois

[

Orphea Three

] (1991)) and three novels (

Hymne aux Murènes

[

Hymn to the Moray Eels

] (1986),

Camille en octobre

[

Please log in to consult the article in its entirety. If you are a member (student of staff) of a subscribing institution (see List), you should be able to access the LE on campus directly (without the need to log in), and off-campus either via the institutional log in we offer, or via your institution's remote access facilities, or by creating a personal user account with your institutional email address. If you are not a member of a subscribing institution, you will need to purchase a personal subscription. For more information on how to subscribe as an individual user, please see under Individual Subcriptions.

2949 words

Citation: Schechner, Stephanie. "Mireille Best". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 20 July 2015 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=13478, accessed 21 November 2024.]

View recommended reading for this article