Queer Places:
23 Rue Vieille-Boucherie in Bayonne where he lived from 1896 to 1935

Georges Hérelle (August 27, 1848 - December 15, 1935) was a French translator, ethnographer and philosophy teacher. He also published under the pseudonyms: L.-R. De Pogey-Castries1 and Agricola Lieberfreund. On 30 April 1897, Hérelle wrote a long reply to Novel of a Born Invert, the book by Georges Saint-Paul. The letter was never sent. He bequeathed it, along with a large file of notes on Greek love and the minutes of conversations with like-minded friends, to the library of Troyes.

Georges Hérelle was born on August 27, 1848 in Pougy-sur-Aube. He studied in Troyes where his father was a teacher, then in Paris at the Lycée Louis-le-Grand. After obtaining a bachelor's degree in philosophy in 1871 in Dijon,he was appointed teacher at various high schools in Normandy,2 then in Bayonne from 1896 until his retirement in 1903. At the same time, he works with great erudition on the history of Champagne and on the history of homosexuality. Once appointed to Bayonne, he studied Basque folklore, including "pastorals", on which he wrote important compilation and analysis work. He was also a great translator of Italian writers, notably D'Annunzio (with whom he maintained friendships), Grazia Deledda, Antonio Fogazzaro and Matilde Serao. He also translates Portuguese and Spanish-language authors such as Blasco Ibaez. He was a friend of Henri Bouchot and Paul Bourget, with whom he maintains epistolary relations, as well as with André Gide. He had a sometimes difficult relationship with bascologist Edward Spencer Dodgson3.

He died on December 15, 1935 in Bayonne.


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