The son of an industrialist, Gaston Chérau died in Boston during a lecture tour. A journalist and chronicler, he regularly gave the press his impressions of travel. In 1911, he traveled through Tripolitania conquered by the Italians on behalf of Le Matin newspaper. In 1914, he was a war reporter for the newspaper L'Illustration in Belgium and the North of France. A fertile novelist of the province, his pen is very influenced by the Berry where he had family roots, stayed a part of his childhood, and where he returned assiduously on vacation in a second home until the end of his life. He was elected a member of the Académie Goncourt in 1926. He was also interested in cinema and wrote the dialogues of the film Les Deux mondes directed by Ewald Andreas Dupont.
Literary work
He is the author of about forty novels.
1901: Les grandes époques de M. Thébault, Chamuel; Justin Clairbois remained in the state of manuscript
1921: Valentine Pacquault is at the same time his greatest success and his most famous work
Sa destinée, novel
Concorde !… 6 février 1934
1935: Le Pimpet, illustrated tale by, Paris, Delagrave
1934: Le pays qui a perdu son âme, novel, Paris, Ferenczi
1930: Le Flambeau des Riffault, novel, Paris, Calmann-Lévy, Paris, Fasquelle
1929: Apprends-moi à être amoureuse, tales, Ferenczi
L'enfant du pays, novel ; The title character may have been inspired by Charles-Amable de La Tour d'Auvergne Lauraguais archbishop of Bourges quoted at his death in a letter from Maurice Sand; The planned sequel, entitled L'Apprenti was not published
1937: Séverin Dunastier, novel, Paris, Albin Michel
A generous epicurean, he prefaced the Histoire du cognac by , an archeologist and writer from an old family of merchants in brandy from Jarnac, whose younger brother Jacques, author among others of Portraits d'oiseaux was the brother-in-law of the writer Jacques Boutelleau, called Jacques Chardonne. He wrote a number of works for children such as Jacques Petitpont, roi de Madagascar, L'enlèvement de la princesse or Contes et nouvelles de Gascogne. Georges Bernanos described him as a "Maupassant of sub-prefecture", because he had not voted for the Voyage au bout de la nuit by Louis-Ferdinand Céline at the 1932edition of the prix Goncourt. .
