Sully Prudhomme Sully Prudhomme René François Armand (Sully) Prudhomme (; 16 March 1839 – 6 September 1907) was a French poet and essayist. He was the first winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1901. Born in Paris, Prudhomme originally studied to be an engineer, but turned to philosophy and later to poetry; he declared it as his intention to create scientific poetry for modern times. In character sincere and melancholic, he was linked to the Parnassus school, although, at the same time, his work displays characteristics of its own. Prudhomme was born to a French shopkeeper. Prudhomme attended the Lycée
Kathleen Sully hopeful and desolating climax... Her book will either disgust you or do what it did to me, purge you with pity and frighten you with its sense of loneliness." Writing in the Sunday Times, Anthony Rhodes called it "one of the finest novels of its kind I have read." Her next book, published in 1956, "Canaille" collected two short novels, "For What We Receive" and "The Weeping and The Laughter." In his review for The Observer, John Wain called Sully "a writer of originality and power. In ..."Canaille", these qualities are so much to the fore that one never knows