René Bazin (December 26, 1853 - July 20, 1932) was a French novelist.

Born at Angers, he studied law in Paris, and on his return to Angers became professor of law in the Catholic university there. He contributed to Parisian journals a series of sketches of provincial life and descriptions of travel, but he made his reputation with Une tache d'encre (A spot of ink) (1888), which received a prize from the Academy.

Other novels of great charm and delicacy followed:

• La Sarcelle bleue (1892)
• Madame Corentine (1893)
• Humble Amour (1894)
• De toute son âme (1897)
• La Terre qui meurt (1899)
• Les Oberlé (1901), an Alsatian story which was dramatized and acted in the following year
• L'Ame alsacienne (1903)
• Donatienne (1903)
• L'Isolée (1905)
• Le blé qui lève (1907)
• Mémoires d'une vieille fille (1908).

La Terre qui meurt, a picture of the decay of peasant farming and a story of La Vendée, was an indirect plea for the development of provincial France. A volume of Questions littéraires et sociales appeared in 1906. René Bazin was admitted to the Académie française on April 28, 1904.

Reference

• This entry incorporates public domain text originally from the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica.