Claude Anet

He turned out novels, plays, biographies, and in 1917 was assigned by a French magazine to cover the Russian revolution. Though he was in fact sympathetic to the revolutionaries, certain "indiscretions" he was involved in forced him to make a hasty exit and he wound up hiding out in the Arctic. He eventually made his way to and crossed the Finnish border and returned home. He continued writing novels, plays, biographies and travel books. His best known work is probably "Mayerling", which has been brought to the stage and the screen several times.

The first person to drive an automobile in Persia, in 1906 he wrote a book about his adventures, "La Perse en automobile" (aka "Through Persia in a Motor Car by Russia and the Caucasus"). He later lived three years in Russia, witnessing the Bolshevik Revolution. He reported on it as "civil war correspondent", which brought him imprisonment, loss of all his goods (including a fine painting by Ingrès now in the Hermitage) and escape. The outcome was a four-volume account of it, "Le Révolution russe de mars 1917 à juin 1918" (1917-19).

After graduation he worked for an American company in Paris, but eventually the "travel bug" got him and he became a journalist, traveling throughout Europe (which resulted in his first book, "Voyage Ideal en Italie: l'Art Ancien et l'Art Moderne" (1899), using the pen name "Claude Anet".

He became a championship-caliber tennis player, and in fact was the 1892 French National Tennis Champion.

French writer "Claude Anet" was born Jean Schopfer in Morgan, Switzerland, in 1868. His father--whom he once described as "a literary man of good taste" who encouraged him to read the classics--was Swiss and his mother English, although she was born and educated in France. As a young man he attended the Sorbonne and the Ecole du Louvre (at the same time), specializing in philosophy, arts and literature, but his overriding passion was for sports, especially tennis.