de Bergerac, Cyrano

French writer. Writer who's works included two novels involving flight to the moon. Most remembered as the subject of an 1897 novel.

Cyrano de Bergerac, Savinien (1619-1655) was a French writer whose works combined political satire and fantasy. As a young man he joined the company of guards, but was wounded at the siege of Arras in 1640 and retired from military life. He then studied under philosopher and mathematician Pierre Gassendi, whose influence was significance. His two best known written works were his two novels of spaceflight to the Moon. He has become famous in the twentieth century largely through the 1897 novel by Edmond Rostand, who described him as a gallant and brilliant, but ugly man with the large nose.