Background
Tristan Bernard was born Paul Bernard on Sept. 7, 1866, at Besançon.Besancon. He studied law, but he never practiced it.
Tristan Bernard was born Paul Bernard on Sept. 7, 1866, at Besançon.Besancon. He studied law, but he never practiced it.
He attended the LycéeLycee Condorcet and later studied law, although he never practiced it. After a short period in business, he came to Paris where he contributed humorous pieces and sports articles to the Revue Blanche. His writings on sports led to his being named manager of the VélodromeVelodrome Buffalo, a bicycle racetrack.
Bernard scored his first outstanding successes in 1899, on the stage, with L'Anglais tel qu'on le parle ("English as It Is Spoken"), a one-act farce, which has been repeatedly revived since; and, with a novel, Les MémoiresMemoires d'un jeune homme rangérange ("The Memoirs of an Orderly Young Man"), which appeared first in installments in Le Journal and then in book form. From that time on, he produced a long series of comedies, farces, librettos of operettas, and dramas, in several of which he appeared as an actor.