Robert de Flers

He met and befriended fellow student and writer Marcel Proust, and that relationship had a great influence upon him.

The event inspired his earliest writings: the novel La Courtisane Taïa et son singe vert (1896), the short story Ilsée, princesse de Tripoli (1896), and the travel narrative Vers l’Orient (1897).

His third opera libretto, Les travaux d'Hercule (1901), marked his first collaboration with fellow playwright Gaston Arman de Caillavet and composer Claude Terrasse.

The two men also wrote a French translation of Franz Lehár's The Merry Widow in 1905 which was used throughout France during the first half of the 20th century.

He spent the last six years of his life as literary editor of Le Figaro, a position he was appointed to in 1921.