On this day in Paris, October 31: The Académie Goncourt holds its first meeting at Drouant.

On October 31, 1914, in the middle of World War I, the jurors of the Goncourt Academy dine for the first time at Drouant, near the Opéra. This improvised Parisian meeting becomes a tradition: more than a century later, it’s still at this restaurant on Place Gaillon that each autumn a page of French literary history is played out.

Just a stone’s throw from the Opéra Garnier, the Dix swap seats. On October 31, 1914, the members of the Académie Goncourt push open the door to Drouant, the Gaillon Square restaurant already frequented by journalists, artists and writers. Yet the circumstances are a far cry from the buzz of the literary season: France has been at war for almost three months, and the publishing world is deeply unsettled. This meeting, however, will establish a Parisian habit that will endure for decades.

When their société littéraire officially took shape in 1903, the académiciens would gather, notably at the Grand Hôtel, before handing their very first prize at Champeaux, on the Bourse square, to John-Antoine Nau for Force ennemie. Beginning in 1904, the Café de Paris, on the avenue de l’Opéra, becomes their regular haunt. They stay there for about a decade, until its closure drives them to find a new address.

Éphéméride du 31 octobre à Paris : L’Académie Goncourt se réunit pour la première fois chez Drouant — Le restaurant Drouant, place Gaillon à Paris, photographié en 1925. L’Académie Goncourt s’y réunit pour la première fois le 31 octobre 1914 avant d’en faire son adresse historique. Copyright : Agence Rol / Bibliothèque nationale de France – domaine public

Drouant was not chosen at random. The restaurant was founded in 1880 by Charles Drouant, an Alsatian settled in Paris, who turned a modest cafe-tobac into a dining spot. Its specialties, notably oysters and seafood, gradually drew a clientele of artists and writers. Edmond de Goncourt himself frequented the venue in the later years of his life, often accompanied by Lucien Descaves, the future Académie member who would bear his name.

Having died in 1896, Edmond de Goncourt had planned in his will the creation of a société de 10 hommes de lettres, funded by his fortune and charged, among other things, with awarding each year a prize of 5,000 francs to a literary work. Family disputes delayed the birth of the institution, but the society was finally recognized as being of public utility in January 1903. Edmond’s idea then became a true academy, with its meetings, discussions, and soon its rituals.

On October 31, 1914, the Drouant gathering still doesn’t look like the highly publicized days we know today. The academics must chiefly figure out how to keep the prize going in wartime. The mobilization throws the editorial calendar into disarray: authors are on the front lines, publishers slow their activity, and several books announced before August ultimately go unpublished.

The issue occupies the Academy for weeks. On December 19, 1914, it finally decides not to award its prize that year. It argues that it would be unfair to judge only works that had time to appear before the mobilization, while others remained with the printer or were delayed by the war. The Goncourt Prize for 1914 is thus postponed!

We had to wait until 1916 for that Goncourt, left in suspense, to find its winner: Adrien Bertrand retroactively receives the 1914 prize for The Call of the Soil. On the same day, the prize for the year 1916 goes to Henri Barbusse for The Fire. The Goncourt Academy still lists Adrien Bertrand in its roll of winners under the year 1914, noting that the award was actually conferred in 1916.

Meanwhile, Drouant has become their home. The jurors have taken to meeting there around a lunch, usually on the first Tuesday of each month, outside the summer season. The Goncourt salon on the first floor ends up being as emblematic in the prize’s imagination as the novels in competition themselves. The members’ cutlery, the private deliberations, and the announcement of the laureate feed, over the course of the 20th century, a whole literary ceremony.

Another prize will further cement this link between literature and Place Gaillon: the Renaudot Prize, established in 1926, also settles at Drouant. The two juries now traditionally announce their results on the same day there, turning the address into one of Paris's most closely watched spots during the grand literary prizes!

Further reading:

A brief history of the great restaurants of Paris: Drouant, literary temple of the Prix Goncourt
Since 1880, Drouant has been home to the Prix Goncourt and French literature. An elegant brasserie in the heart of the 2nd arrondissement, it has combined classic gastronomy and literary heritage for over a century. [Read more]

Drouant: the iconic Parisian restaurant of the Goncourt Academy near the Opéra
An institution founded in 1880 in Paris’s 2nd arrondissement, the restaurant Drouant preserves the grand French bourgeois cuisine under the stewardship of chef Romain Van Thienen. A temple of the Goncourt Prize, open daily. [Read more]

The legendary restaurants and cafés of artistic and literary Paris, historic addresses
Immerse yourself in the Paris of yesteryear, discovering the mythical and historic restaurants, bistros and cafés where artists, authors and intellectuals met. [Read more]

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