1913-1960
 

                             "You will never be happy if you
                             continue to search for what happiness
                             consists of. You will never live if you
                             are looking for the meaning of life."                             --Albert Camus (1913 - 1960)

    Albert Camus was born into poverty. He was raised in a working class family. He was born in Algeria, a country in North Africa. He worked many different jobs before turning to journalism, in order to pay for his courses at the University of Algiers.
He was in the weather bureau, an automobile-accessory firm, and a shipping company. His first noticed assignment was a report on the region of Kabylie, and how unhappy the Muslims there were. He ran a theater company for 3 years. There were many plays that he produced. Some of these plays were Malraux, Gide, Synge, and Dostoevski. The Theatre de l'Equipe was the name of the theater. He helped write during the French Resistance. He also edited a underground  newsletter called Combat.
After World War II he stayed active in the theatre. This is when he started writing plays and novels, such as The Stranger , and The Fall.
 
 

List of Albert's books and essays:
                The Fall (1957)
                The Rebel (1954)
                A Happy Death
                Exile and the Kingdom (1958)
                Caligula and Three Other (1958)
                The Possessed (1960)
                Resistance, Rebellion, and Death (1961)
                Notebooks 1953-1942 (1963)
                Notebooks 1942-1951 (1965)
                Lyrical and Critical Essays (1968)
                Cashiers I (1972)

    A novelist and playwright, Camus expressed strong Existentialist views.  Existentialists mainly believed in individual freedom,  existence, and choice.  They feel that there is no objective in in terms of moral choice.  They feel that it is important to have individual freedom to decide upon questions of morality and truth.  A primary theme is that a human being creates his or her own nature and existence.  Existentialists also believe that should always accept the responsibility and consequences of their actions.  Because individuals choose their own paths, they are subject to commit a personally valid way of life.
 

                     Early Life

    Camus attended the high school and university in Algiers.  There he discovered and interest in sports and theater.  His career in the university was suddenly cut short by an attack of tuberculosis. He suffered from this illness periodically throughout his lifetime.  Themes of sport, poverty, and horrific human morality are present in his volumes of Algerian essays: L'envers et l'endroit (The Wrong Side and the Right Side,1937),Noces (Nuptials,1938), and L'Ete (Summer,1954).  He became a journalist with an anticolonialist newspaper called Alger-Republican.  Working for this daily, he wrote reports on conditions and lives of poor Arabs from the Kabyles region.  These reports were later compiled and published in the abridged form in Actuelles III (1958).

    Camus worked for the Combat resistance network in France during World War II.  He undertook the editorship of the Parisian daily Combat.  During the war, Camus published the main works associated with degree of the absurd.  He viewed that human life is basically meaningless by death.

1913 Born in Algeria.

1914 Father drafted into WWI and killed in France.

1930 Finished early schooling majoring in philosophy with a goal to teach.

1934 Married Simone Hié

1936 Divorced Simone Hié

1935-1938 Ran the Theatre de l'Equipe.

1938 Became a journalist.

1939 Volunteered for service in WWII, but rejected due to illness.

1940 Remarried wrote an essay on the state of Muslims in Algeria causing him to lose his job and move to Paris.

1941 Joined the French Resistance against the Nazis and became an editor of Combat an underground newspaper.

1941 Writes the novel L'etranger (The Stranger) and meets Jean Paul Sartre.

1942 Writes the play Caligula.

1942 Writes the essay Le Mythe de Sisyphe (The Myth of Sisyphus).

1946 Writes the novel La Peste (The Plague)

1947 Writes the play Les Justes (The Just Assassins)

1947 Dissatisfied with editorial board of Combat and leaves the paper.

1951 Writes the book L'Homme Revolte (The Rebel)

1951 Writes the shorts stories in L'Exil et le Royaume (Exile and the Kingdom)

1956 Writes the novel La Chute (The Fall)

1957 Wins the Nobel Prize in Literature.

1960 Dies in an automobile accident

Picture of Camus at eleven years of age

Picture of Camus' grave.