[3] Born and raised in Arras, as a teenager Jouve read Rimbaud, Mallarmé, and Baudelaire and began to write poetry of his own.

In 1906, he and his sister Madeleine, together with their close family friends the Charpentiers, founded the literary magazine Le Bandeau d'Or.

[4] At that time, Jouve drew close to the Abbaye de Créteil, a literary and utopian movement based outside Paris.

A militant pacifist, in 1915 he and Andrée left France for Switzerland, where he became close to the novelist Romain Rolland and continued to serve as an orderly.

[8] In later life, he and Blanche were at the center of a circle of writers and artists that included Balthus, Philippe Roman, David Gascoyne, and[9][circular reference] Henry Bauchaud.