Henri Massis

Henri Massis (21 March 1886 – 16 April 1970) was a conservative French essayist, literary critic and literary historian.

Massis was born on 21 March 1886 in Paris, France. He attended Lycée Condorcet and University of Paris. He began his publishing career in his early twenties with his works Comment Émile Zola Composait ses Romans, Le Puits de Pyrrhon, and La Pensée de Maurice Barrès.

He collaborated with his friend Albert de Tarde, they published essays commenting on the French university system and the generation of 1912.

Massis converted to Catholicism in 1913 and, following World War I, called for a revival of the French spirit and Catholicism. Starting in 1920, he served as editor for the newly formed Revue Universelle and worked to spread Christian political philosophy. He published two volumes of Jugements that critically analysed the moral teachings of numerous writers such as Ernest Renan and André Gide. Massis' political writings expressed his concerns over what he viewed as a threat to postwar French society, including Bolshevism and Oriental mysticism.

While involved in the Vichy Government during World War II, Massis refused to collaborate with the Nazi movement. After the war, he was placed in an internment camp for only one month, and then released. Massis worked for Plon after the war, and his writings reflected his disdain of Nazism in Germany, and Bolshevism in Russia. Massis was elected to the Académie française in 1960 and died in Paris on 16 April 1970.