Thierry Maulnier

Thierry Maulnier (born Jacques Talagrand; 1 October 1909, Alès – 9 January 1988, Marnes-la-Coquette) was a French journalist, essayist, dramatist, and literary critic. He was married to theatre director Marcelle Tassencourt.

A graduate of the École Normale Supérieure in the same class as Roger Vailland, Robert Brasillach, and Maurice Bardèche. While still a student, Maulnier became active in the integralist Action Française, and published in Charles Maurras' newspaper (L'Action française). He made a career in journalism and took part in the movement of the Non-conformists of the 1930s, inspired by the personalist generation of young intellectuals who shared some of the ideals of the Action Française, holding right-wing beliefs as an answer to a "crisis of civilization" and materialism. He also campaigned against democracy and capitalism, advocating a union of the right and left to overthrow the two. Thierry Maulnier associated with youth periodicals such as Réaction, La Revue du Siècle, and La Revue française; he also wrote his first volume, La crise est dans l'homme ("Crisis Is in Man").

In 1934, he authored, with Jean-Pierre Maxence, the manifesto Demain la France ("Tomorrow, France"). Maxence and Maulnier also founded the weekly L'Insurgé in 1936 lasting only a few months, the magazine circulated nationalist tenets, reviewed in Maulnier's 1938 essay Au-delà du nationalisme ("Beyond Nationalism"). At the same time, he joined Jean de Fabrègues in the creation of a more analytical paper, Combat, one which would be published until France's defeat in World War II.