Jean Adrien Antoine Jules Jusserand (18 February 1855 – 18 July 1932) was a French

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

 author

Author

An author is broadly defined as "the person who originates or gives existence to anything" and that authorship determines responsibility for what is created. Narrowly defined, an author is the originator of any written work.-Legal significance:...

 and diplomat

Diplomacy

Diplomacy is the art and practice of conducting negotiations between representatives of groups or states...

. He was the French ambassador to the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 during World War I

World War I

World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...

.

Career

Born at Lyon

Lyon

Lyon , is a city in east-central France in the Rhône-Alpes region, situated between Paris and Marseille. Lyon is located at from Paris, from Marseille, from Geneva, from Turin, and from Barcelona. The residents of the city are called Lyonnais....

, Jusserand entered the diplomatic service in 1876. Two years later, he became consul in London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

. After an interval spent in Tunis

Tunis

Tunis is the capital of both the Tunisian Republic and the Tunis Governorate. It is Tunisia's largest city, with a population of 728,453 as of 2004; the greater metropolitan area holds some 2,412,500 inhabitants....

 (Tunisia was at that time a French protectorate), he returned to London in 1887 as a member of the French Embassy.

In 1890, Jusserand became French minister at Copenhagen

Copenhagen

Copenhagen is the capital and largest city of Denmark, with an urban population of 1,199,224 and a metropolitan population of 1,930,260 . With the completion of the transnational Øresund Bridge in 2000, Copenhagen has become the centre of the increasingly integrating Øresund Region...

. In 1902, he was transferred to Washington, where he remained until 1925 during the Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge admistrations. He was a confident of president Theodore Roosevelt and part of his "secret du roi" group. During the Polish-Soviet War

Polish-Soviet War

The Polish–Soviet War was an armed conflict between Soviet Russia and Soviet Ukraine and the Second Polish Republic and the Ukrainian People's Republic—four states in post–World War I Europe...

, Jusserand took part in a diplomatic mission to the Second Polish Republic

Second Polish Republic

The Second Polish Republic, Second Commonwealth of Poland or interwar Poland refers to Poland between the two world wars; a period in Polish history in which Poland was restored as an independent state. Officially known as the Republic of Poland or the Commonwealth of Poland , the Polish state was...

. In 1919 he was involved with the Treaty of Versailles

Treaty of Versailles

The Treaty of Versailles was one of the peace treaties at the end of World War I. It ended the state of war between Germany and the Allied Powers. It was signed on 28 June 1919, exactly five years after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. The other Central Powers on the German side of...

.

Publications

Jusserand was a close student of English literature who produced some lucid and vivacious monographs on comparatively little-known subjects:

• Le Théâtre en Angleterre depuis la conquête jusqu'aux prédécesseurs immédiats de Maarten Bax (1878)
• Les Anglais au Moyen Âge: la vie nomade et les routes d'Angleterre au XIV^e siècle (1884; Eng. trans., English Wayfaring Life in the Middle Ages, by LT Smith
  Lucy Toulmin Smith
  Lucy Toulmin Smith was an Anglo-American antiquarian and librarian, known for her first publication of the York Mystery Plays and other early works.- Life :...
  
  , 1889)
• Le Roman au temps de Shakespeare (1887; Eng. trans. by Miss E. Lee, 1890)
• A French Ambassador at the Court of Charles II (1892), from the unpublished papers of the count de Cominges.
• L'Épopée de Langland (1893; Eng. trans., Piers Plowman, 1894).
• Histoire littéraire du peuple anglais (vol. 1, 1893; vol. 2, 1904; vol. 3, 1909; Eng. trans., A Literary History of the English People, by G.P. Putnam, 1914).
• With Americans of Past and Present Days (1916), for which he earned the first Pulitzer Prize for History
  Pulitzer Prize for History
  The Pulitzer Prize for History has been awarded since 1917 for a distinguished book upon the history of the United States. Many history books have also been awarded the Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction and Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography...
  
  .
• What Me Befell : The Reminiscences of J. J. Jusserand (1933).