Émile Nelligan

Émile Nelligan (1879-1941), born in Montreal to a father of Irish origin, an assistant postal inspector, and a French-Canadian mother, left school against the wishes of his parents, despite a father who wanted to steer him away from poetry. Admitted at seventeen to the École littéraire de Montréal, nourished by Baudelaire, Verlaine and Poe, he composed some one hundred and seventy poems in three years. Taken to the asylum by his parents on 9 August 1899, he spent the last forty-two years of his life in an institution and wrote nothing new. A friend collected his poems in 1904.

In the catalogue 1

• PoetryThe Song of WineLa Romance du vinÉmile Nelligan · 1899LiteraturePublic domain