Andrée Viollis - An Irishman's Diary

Andrée Viollis (1870-1950) was a French journalist who worked as a grand reporter - a curious combination of war correspondent and special correspondent. Her career in journalism began around the time of the Dreyfus Affair (1894) and lasted for much of the first half of the 20th century. 

I have just written a short article about her and her reporting from Ireland in the 1920s, in the Irish Times newspaper. Read it here.

Andrée Viollis (1870-1950). Image source.

Viollis traveled to Ireland during the Civil War, which lasted from June 1922 to May 1923. She did not seem to fear visiting a country that was experiencing such turmoil. During the First World War, she spent two years as a volunteer nurse at the front and saw her fair share of death and injury. Later, she worked as a journalist during the War. 

She was the only female correspondent to witness and write about the Paris Peace Conference (1919) and one of the few female foreign correspondents that came to Ireland at that time to write about what was happening. 

After Ireland, she made her name through her journalism and books (based on her newspaper articles) about travel to countries including Afghanistan, Armenia, Turkey, China and Japan. During the Second World War, she helped the Resistance in France by writing pamphlets and she transported them concealed in bags of wheat or nuts. 

 

Photograph of Andrée Viollis (1938). Image source.

A committed member of the French Communist party, Viollis was always on the side of the worker. In 1926, she paid a visit to a Welsh coalmine and wrote about the hard working conditions that the miners had to endure. While some miners could sit up in the mine to extract the coal, others had to spend hours on their backs in mud in a coal seam just 32 inches high. 

Viollis' daughter, Simone Téry (1897-1967), was also a well-known journalist and Téry also traveled to Ireland in the 1920s. Téry arrived just after the Truce in the War of Independence and wrote for the left-leaning newspaper L'Oeuvre. Téry produced two books about Ireland, one on the political scene (based on her newspaper articles) and one about the cultural life of the country. It is easy to see where Téry's writing talent came from.