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Romain Rolland (1866-1944) was a French dramatist, novelist, essayist, art historian and mystic who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1915. He was a leading supporter of Stalin in France and also noted for his correspondence with and influence on Sigmund Freud. Accepted into the Ecole normale superieure in 1886, he first studied philosophy but his independence of spirit led him to abandon that so as not to submit to the dominant ideology. He received his degree in history in 1889 and after spending two years in Rome returned to France in 1895 where he received his doctoral degree. Over the next two decades he taught at various lycees in Paris before directing the newly established music school of the Ecole des Hautes Etudes Sociales from 1902-11. In 1903 he was appointed to the first chair of music history at the Sorbonne, and through his advocacy for a 'people's theatre' he made a significant contribution towards the democratizaation of the theatre. As a humanist he embraced the work of the philosophers of India, publishing works on both Rabindranath Tagore and Mohandas Ghandi, and he was also a lifelong pacifist. However, he was first and foremost a writer and, assured that literature would provide him with a modest income, he resigned from the university in 1912, and as a novelist he is best remembered for the 10-volume sequence Jean-Christophe (1904-1912), the hero, a musical genius, becoming a vehicle for Rolland's views on music, social matters and understanding between nations. His book on Ghandi, published in 1924, contributed to the Indian leader's wider reputation and the two men met in 1931. This English language edition, translated by Catherine D. Groth, includes a frontispiece portrait of Ghandi.

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