Georges Joseph Christian Simenon (French: [ʒɔʁʒ simnɔ̃]; February 12 or 13, 1903 – September 4, 1989) was a Belgian writer who created the fictional detective Jules Maigret. He was one of the most productive and successful authors of the 20th century. He wrote about 400 novels (192 under his own name), 21 volumes of memoirs, and many short stories. His books sold more than 500 million copies worldwide.
In addition to his detective stories, Simenon wrote literary novels that critics praised highly. He called these works romans durs, which means "hard novels." Some of his admirers included writers like Max Jacob, François Mauriac, and André Gide. Gide once said, “I think Simenon is a great novelist, perhaps the greatest, and the most genuine novelist in modern French literature.”
Simenon was born and raised in Liège, Belgium. He lived in France from 1922 to 1945, in the United States from 1946 to 1955, and in Switzerland from 1957 until his death in 1989. Many of his stories are based on his own life, including his childhood in Liège, his travels, wartime experiences, and personal relationships.
Critics like John Banville have praised Simenon’s work for showing deep understanding of people’s emotions and for creating vivid descriptions of places and times. Some of his most famous books include The Saint-Fiacre Affair (1932), Monsieur Hire’s Engagement (1933), Act of Passion (1947), The Snow Was Dirty (1948), and The Cat (1967).
Early life and education
Georges Simenon was born on February 12, 1903, at 26 Rue Léopold in Liège, Belgium (now numbered 24). His parents were Désiré Simenon and Henriette Brüll. Désiré worked at an insurance company’s accounting office, and he married Henriette in April 1902. His birth time is recorded as 11:30 p.m. on February 12, 1903, or possibly just after midnight on February 13, 1903. The later date may have been changed due to a belief about bad luck associated with the number 13.
The Simenon family had roots in both Walloon and Flemish cultures, settling in the Belgian region of Limburg in the 1600s. Henriette’s family included people from Flemish, Dutch, and German backgrounds. One of her ancestors, Gabriel Brühl, was a criminal who lived in Limburg from the 1720s until he was executed in 1743. Later, Simenon used Brühl as one of his pen names for his writing.
In April 1905, two years after Simenon’s birth, the family moved to 3 Rue Pasteur in Liège’s Outremeuse neighborhood (now numbered 25 Rue Georges Simenon). His brother, Christian, was born in September 1906 and became their mother’s favorite child, which Simenon felt jealous about. However, Simenon admired his father and later said his character was partly inspired by his father’s personality.
At age three, Simenon learned to read at the Ecole Guardienne, a school run by the Sisters of Notre Dame. Between 1908 and 1914, he attended the Institut Saint-André, a school run by the Christian Brothers.
In 1911, the family moved to 53 Rue de la Loi, where they rented rooms to people, including students from Eastern Europe, Jewish individuals, and political refugees. This exposure to diverse people influenced Simenon’s later writing, as seen in his books Pedigree (1948) and Le Locataire (The Lodger, 1938).
When World War I began in August 1914, German forces occupied Liège. Henriette rented rooms to German officers, which upset Désiré. Simenon later said the war years were some of his happiest times, though he also remembered that “my father cheated, my mother cheated, everyone cheated.”
In October 1914, Simenon started school at Collège Saint-Louis, a Jesuit high school. After one year, he moved to Collège St Servais, where he studied for three years. He excelled in French but struggled in other subjects. He read many classic books in Russian, French, and English, often skipped school, and stole small amounts of money to buy pastries and other treats during wartime shortages.
In 1917, the family moved to a former post-office building on Rue des Maraîchers. Simenon left school in June 1918, claiming his father’s poor health as a reason, without taking his final exams. After short jobs at a bakery and a bookstore, he became unemployed when the war ended in November 1918. He witnessed violent punishments against people in Liège accused of helping the enemy, which deeply affected him. These experiences were later written about in Pedigree and Les trois crimes de mes amis (My Friends’ Three Crimes, 1938).
Early career, 1919–1922
In January 1919, the 15-year-old Simenon began working as a young reporter for the Gazette de Liège, a newspaper that supported right-wing Catholic views and was edited by Joseph Demarteau. Within a few months, he was assigned to write about crimes and signed his articles "Georges Sim." By April, he had his own column for opinions and gossip, which he signed "Monsieur Le Coq." He also conducted interviews with important people, such as Hirohito, Crown Prince of Japan, and French war hero Marshal Foch. Between 1920 and 1921, Simenon took a course in forensic science at the University of Liège to learn more about modern police methods.
In May 1920, Simenon started publishing short stories in the Gazette. In September 1920, he finished his first novel, Au Pont des Arches, which he published himself in 1921. While working at the Gazette, he wrote two other novels, but neither was published.
In June 1919, Simenon joined a group of young artists and free-spirited people called "La Caque" (herring barrel). The group met at night to drink, discuss art and philosophy, and sometimes used drugs like morphine and cocaine. In early 1922, one member of the group, Joseph Kleine, committed suicide at the doors of the St. Pholien church in Liège after a night of heavy drinking with La Caque. Simenon was the last person to see Kleine alive and was deeply affected by the event. He later wrote about it in Les trois crimes de mes amis and Le pendu de St Pholien (1931).
Through La Caque, Simenon met a young painter named Régine Renchon. In early 1921, they began a relationship and soon became engaged. They agreed that Simenon should complete his required year of military service before they married.
Simenon’s father died in November 1921, an event Simenon described as "the most important day in a man's life." Soon after, he began his military service. After a short time with the Allied forces in Germany, he was moved to the cavalry barracks in Liège and allowed to continue writing for the Gazette.
When Simenon’s military service ended in December 1922, he left the Gazette and moved to Paris to set up a home for himself and his future wife, Régine, whom he preferred to call Tigy.
France, 1922–1945
In Paris, Simenon found a simple job with a far-right political group led by the writer Binet-Valmer. In March 1923, he returned to Liège to marry Régine. Neither Simenon nor Régine were religious, but they chose to marry in a Catholic church to please Simenon’s mother, who was very religious.
The newlyweds moved to Paris, where Régine tried to become a painter while Simenon worked again for Binet-Valmer and sent articles to the Revue Sincère in Brussels, where he was the Paris correspondent. He also wrote short stories for popular magazines, but sales were not consistent.
In the summer of 1923, Simenon was hired by the Marquis de Tracy as a private secretary, requiring him to spend nine months each year at the Marquis’s rural properties. Régine moved to a village near the Marquis’s main estate in Paray-le-Frésil, near Moulins.
While working for the Marquis, Simenon began sending stories to Le Matin, whose literary editor was Colette. Colette told him to use simpler words and descriptions. Simenon followed her advice and became a regular contributor to the paper within a year.
With a steady income from writing, Simenon left the Marquis’s employ in 1924 and returned to Paris, where he and Régine found an apartment in the fashionable Place des Vosges. Simenon wrote and sold short stories at a rate of 80 typed pages per day and began writing pulp novels. His first novel, Le roman d'une dactylo (The Story of a Typist), was quickly sold, and two more appeared in 1924 under the names "Jean du Perry" and "Georges Simm." From 1921 to 1934, Simenon used 17 pen names while writing 358 novels and short stories.
In the summer of 1925, the Simenons traveled to Normandy, where they met Henriette Liberge, an 18-year-old fisherman’s daughter. Régine offered her a job as their housekeeper in Paris, and Henriette accepted. Simenon began calling her "Boule," and she became his lover and part of the Simenon household for 39 years.
Simenon began an affair with Josephine Baker in 1926 or 1927 and worked as her assistant and editor for her magazine. However, the Simenons grew tired of their busy life in Paris and, in April 1928, traveled with Boule for six months on a boat called the Ginette, exploring France’s rivers and canals. Without Josephine Baker’s distractions, Simenon’s sales of popular novels increased from 11 in 1927 to 44 in 1928.
In the spring of 1929, the Simenons and Boule traveled by boat to northern France, Belgium, and Holland on a custom-built boat called the Ostrogoth. Simenon started writing detective stories for a new magazine called Détective and continued publishing popular novels, mainly with the publisher Fayard.
During his northern tour, Simenon wrote three popular novels featuring a police inspector named Maigret, but only one, Train de nuit (Night Train), was accepted by Fayard. He began working on this novel (or possibly its follow-up, Pietr-le-Letton (Pietr the Latvian)) in September 1929 while the Ostrogoth was being repaired in the Dutch city of Delfzijl.
In April 1930, Simenon completed Pietr-le-Letton, the first novel in which Inspector Maigret of the Paris mobile crime brigade was fully developed. The novel was published in a magazine called Ric et Rac later that year and was the first fictional work to appear under Simenon’s real name.
The first Maigret novels were released in book form by Fayard in February 1931 at a fancy dress party with a police and criminals theme. The event was widely reported, and the novels received positive reviews. Simenon wrote 19 Maigret novels by the end of 1933, and the series eventually sold 500 million copies.
In April 1932, the Simenons and Boule moved to La Rochelle on France’s west coast. Soon after, they traveled to Africa, where Simenon visited his brother, a colonial administrator in the Belgian Congo. He also visited other African colonies and wrote articles critical of colonialism. He used his African experiences in novels like Le Coup de lune (Tropic Moon) (1933) and 45 à l'ombre (Aboard the Aquitaine) (1936).
In 1933, the Simenons visited Germany and Eastern Europe, and Simenon arranged an interview with Leon Trotsky in exile in Turkey for Paris-Soir. Upon returning, he announced he would no longer write Maigret novels and signed a contract with the prestigious publisher Gallimard for his new work.
Maigret, written in June 1933, was intended to be the final novel in the series and ended with the detective retiring. Simenon called the Maigret novels "semi-literary" and aimed to establish himself as a serious writer, stating his goal was to win the Nobel Prize for Literature by 1947.
Notable novels from the 1930s, written after Maigret’s temporary retirement, include Le testament Donadieu (The Shadow Falls) (1937), L'homme qui regardait passer les trains (The Man Who Watched the Trains Go By) (1938), and Le bourgmestre de Furnes (The Burgomaster of Furnes) (1939). André Gide and François Mauriac were among Simenon’s greatest literary admirers at the time.
In 1935, the Simenons undertook a world tour that included the Americas, the Galapagos Islands, Tahiti, Australia, and India. They later moved back to Paris, living in the fashionable Neuilly district in a life of luxury that Simenon later described as "too sumptuous."
They returned to La Rochelle in 1938 because, as Simenon later explained, "I was sickened by the life I was leading." In April 1939, Simenon’s first child, Marc, was born.
Simenon was in a café in La Rochelle when France declared war on Germany on September 3, 1939. In May 1940, Germany invaded Belgium, and La Rochelle became
United States and Canada, 1945–1955
The Simenons arrived in New York in October 1945 and soon moved to Canada, where they settled in Sainte-Marguerite-du-Lac-Masson, Quebec, located north of Montreal. In November, Simenon met Denyse Ouimet, a 25-year-old French-Canadian woman, and began a relationship with her. He also hired her as his secretary. Denyse moved into the Simenon home in January 1946 and later told Régine that she was now Simenon’s lover. Simenon wrote about his relationship with Denyse in his books Trois chambres à Manhattan (Three Bedrooms in Manhattan) and Lettre à mon juge (Act of Passion), both published in 1947.
In the summer of 1946, the Simenons and Denyse traveled to Florida and later visited Cuba to arrange permanent U.S. residency visas. It was in Florida that Simenon wrote Lettre à mon juge, a novel widely regarded as one of his most important works.
In June 1947, the Simenons moved to Arizona. Boule joined them there in 1948 after Régine stopped opposing Simenon’s plan to have a wife and two lovers in his household. Simenon worked daily from 6 a.m. to 9 a.m., writing an average of 4,500 words each day. During his time in Arizona, he wrote two Maigret novels and several romans durs (hard novels), including La neige était sale (The Snow Was Dirty), published in 1948. This book sold 2 million copies in its 1951 American paperback edition.
In early 1949, Denyse became pregnant, and Simenon asked Régine for a divorce. Denyse gave birth to a son, Jean Dennis Chrétien Simenon (known as John), on September 29. Régine had previously moved to California with Marc and Boule. Simenon, Denyse, and their son soon relocated to Carmel-by-the-Sea, near Marc. The divorce was finalized in Nevada on June 21, 1950, and Simenon married Denyse the following day.
The newlyweds moved to Lakeville, Connecticut, and also rented a house in nearby Salmon Creek for Régine, Marc, and Boule. During the five years Simenon lived in Connecticut, he wrote 13 Maigret novels and 14 romans durs, including La mort de Belle (Belle) and L'horloger d'Everton (The Watchmaker of Everton), both published in 1952 and 1954, respectively.
While in Connecticut, Simenon’s book sales reached an estimated 3 million copies per year. He was also elected president of the Mystery Writers of America. Simenon and Denyse traveled to Europe twice, in 1952 and 1954. During the 1952 trip, Simenon was admitted to the Royal Belgian Academy. In February 1953, Denyse gave birth to a daughter, Marie-Georges Simenon (known as Marie-Jo). By this time, Boule had moved in with Simenon and Denyse and resumed her role as his lover.
By 1955, Simenon felt unhappy living in America and worried that Denyse, who wished to live in Europe, was growing distant from him. In March 1955, Simenon, Denyse, and Boule traveled to Europe for a holiday and did not return to live in America.
Return to Europe, 1955–1989
The Simenons moved to France and lived in Mougins, near Cannes. Régine and Marc stayed in a nearby hotel. During his first six months in France, Simenon wrote two Maigret novels and two romans durs. However, he still looked for a permanent home. In July 1957, the Simenons and Boule moved to the Château d’Echandens near Lausanne, Switzerland. They lived there for seven years.
In May 1959, Denyse gave birth to a son named Pierre. Pierre became seriously ill but survived the first year of his life. In December 1961, Simenon and Denyse hired Teresa Sburelin, a young Italian woman, as a maid. Teresa became Simenon’s lover and remained with him for the rest of his life.
While living in Switzerland, Simenon wrote three to five novels each year. Two of his most famous works from this time were Le président (1958) and Les anneaux de Bicêtre (1963).
The relationship between Simenon and Denyse became worse. Both drank heavily, and Simenon admitted he had hit Denyse. In June 1962, Denyse was encouraged to go to a mental health clinic for several months. In 1961, the Simenons decided to build a new house in Epalinges, above Lausanne. The house was completed in December 1963, but Denyse lived there for only a few months before returning to the clinic.
Denyse left Epalinges for the last time in April 1964. In November 1962, Simenon dismissed Boule, who moved to live with Marc, who was now married with children.
Although Simenon never divorced Denyse, he lived with Teresa and three of his children: John, Marie-Jo, and Pierre. He continued to write steadily, producing three to four books each year from 1965 to 1971. Some of his important works from this time were Le petit saint (1965) and Le chat (1967).
In February 1973, Simenon announced he was retiring from writing. A few months later, he and Teresa moved into a small house in Lausanne. He did not write any new fiction after this time but dictated 21 volumes of memoirs.
In May 1978, Simenon’s daughter, Marie-Jo, died by suicide in Paris at the age of 25. In his final memoirs, Mémoires intimes (1981), he wrote, “One never recovers from the loss of a daughter one has cherished. It leaves a void that nothing can fill.”
Simenon had a brain operation in 1984 but fully recovered. From late 1988, he used a wheelchair. He died on September 4, 1989, after falling.
Works and critical reception
Georges Simenon wrote many books. He published 192 novels under his own name, more than 200 novels under different names, four autobiographies, and 21 volumes of memoirs. He also wrote many short stories. By the time he died, his novels had sold over 500 million copies, making him one of the most successful novelists in history. In 2008, The Times named him the second greatest crime writer of all time after Patricia Highsmith.
Simenon’s fiction is often divided into three groups: his early popular novels written under a false name, which ended in 1933; his series of novels featuring Detective Chief Inspector Jules Maigret (75 novels and 28 short stories); and his 117 literary novels, which he called romans durs ("hard novels").
The first Maigret novel published under Simenon’s name was Pietr-le-Letton (Pietr the Latvian), which was published in parts in 1930. The last Maigret novel was Maigret et M. Charles (Maigret and Monsieur Charles), published in 1972.
The early Maigret novels were generally well-received and praised for trying to improve the quality of French crime writing. However, some critics joked about how quickly Simenon wrote them. One newspaper wrote, “Mr. Georges Simenon makes his living by killing someone every month and then discovering the murderer.”
Maigret stories are short and use simple language. Simenon limited his vocabulary to about 2,000 words and said his stories were meant for people with average education to read in one sitting.
Some critics and writers, such as Patrick Marnham and Scott Bradfield, noted that early Maigret stories were different from other crime novels because the detective does not search for clues or use logic to solve crimes. Instead, Maigret tries to understand the lives of victims and suspects. In most stories, Maigret seeks to understand criminals rather than judge them.
Simenon said his Maigret stories often dealt with serious themes, such as how politics affects justice, class differences, and how social background and chance influence whether someone becomes a criminal or a respected person.
Some critics, like John Banville, said the plots of Maigret stories were sometimes not realistic. However, they praised Simenon’s ability to describe the atmosphere of places and explore human emotions. Banville wrote about The Saint-Fiacre Affair, “The story is silly, as usual, but the description of the town and its people makes such problems unimportant.”
Simenon stopped writing Maigret stories in 1933 to focus on his romans durs. In 1937, he said his goal was to win the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1947.
Simenon described a novel as “a passion that completely controls a writer and allows him to express his inner struggles by giving them form and sharing them with the world.” He said his novels were about “the real person, the one who looks in the mirror while shaving and knows the truth about himself.”
Michel Lemoine added that many characters in Simenon’s books ask, “Who am I? What have I done with my life?”
Biographer Fenton Besler described romans durs as “psychological thrillers” where Simenon explored dark parts of the human mind and created a unique, tense atmosphere. Besler noted that regardless of where the stories are set, the characters face similar struggles, but their problems are influenced by their surroundings.
Patrick Marnham said Simenon’s early romans durs often focused on themes like life in Paris, prostitution, the difficult lives of servants and shop workers, police corruption, and the hope of escape through train stations. He compared Simenon’s interest in ordinary people to that of the writer Balzac. Marnham also said many of Simenon’s stories were based on his own life, with real events fictionalized and taken to extreme social, criminal, or psychological situations.
Simenon’s romans durs were admired by other writers, including Max Jacob, François Mauriac, and André Gide. However, critics in France and the United States had mixed opinions about his work. Some believed this was because of his books’ popularity and the speed at which he wrote them.
Some of Simenon’s most praised novels include Monsieur Hire’s Engagement (1933), The Man Who Watched the Trains Go By (1938), Monsieur Monde Vanishes (1945), Act of Passion (1947), The Snow Was Dirty (1948), Red Lights (1953), and The Little Saint (1967).
Honours and legacy
In 2003, the collection La Pléiade published 21 of Simenon's novels in two volumes. The novels were chosen by Professor Jacques Dubois, head of the Centre for Georges Simenon Studies at the University of Liège, and his assistant Benoît Denis, both experts on Simenon. A third volume containing eight novels and two autobiographical works was published in 2009.
Selected works
The following works were chosen to be included in the Pléiade editions of the writings by Georges Simenon. Each entry lists the original French title and the year it was first published in France, followed by the titles of major English translations that were published in printed books. Unless stated otherwise, the information about the French titles and publication dates comes from Bernard Alavoine, Trudee Young, Tout Simenon, and Tout Maigret. The information about the English translation titles comes from Trudee Young, Barry Forshaw, Patrick Marnham, and Penguin UK.
Film adaptations
Simenon's stories have been used in many movies and TV shows. He has been listed as a contributor on at least 171 productions. Some well-known movies are: