He was elected to a chair at the Académie Française on 26 March 1935, in competition with Paul Claudel, partly thanks to lobbying efforts by Pierre Benoit.

Mitsouko's story is found in Farrère's novel La Bataille (The Battle, 1909), which is a romance based upon Japan's modernization and westernization during the Meiji period and upon the 1905 naval Battle of Tsushima when the Imperial Japanese Navy defeated the Russian Imperial Navy.

La Bataille was translated in several foreign languages, including Serbian by Veljko M. Milićević under the title Boj (The Battle), published in Sarajevo in 1912.

Another Serbian author, Jelena Skerlić translated Farrère's Dix-sept histoires de marins (1914) under the title Iz mornarskog života: priče also published in Sarajevo in 1920.

As a traditionalist conservative intellectual, he sympathized with the Rebel faction and the Francoist dictatorship in Spain,[2][3] and he also was one of the French Academy members that actively supported the collaborationist Vichy Regime, helping to legitimize Marshal Pétain's authority.