Émile Masson was a Breton writer and thinker. He also used the pseudonyms Brenn, Ewan Gweznou, and Ion Prigent.

Born in Brest, he was not brought up speaking Breton, but acquired the language in later life. He received two degrees (philosophy and English) and moved to Paris. He was associated with several radical movements of the period: the dreyfusards, anarchism

Anarchism

Anarchism is generally defined as the political philosophy which holds the state to be undesirable, unnecessary, and harmful, or alternatively as opposing authority in the conduct of human relations...

, collectivism, antimilitarism. At this time he befriended Élisée Reclus

Élisée Reclus

Élisée Reclus , also known as Jacques Élisée Reclus, was a renowned French geographer, writer and anarchist. He produced his 19-volume masterwork La Nouvelle Géographie universelle, la terre et les hommes , over a period of nearly 20 years...

, Kropotkin

Kropotkin

Peter Kropotkin was a Russian prince and anarchist.Kropotkin may also refer to:*Pyotr Nikolayevich Kropotkin , Soviet/Russian geologist, tectonician, and geophysicist*Mount Kropotkin, a peak in Antarctica...

 and Romain Rolland

Romain Rolland

Romain Rolland was a French dramatist, novelist, essayist, art historian and mystic who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1915.-Biography:...

. He took part in the universitaire populaires (1899–1905). Returning to Brittany, he became a professor of English at Pontivy High School. He translated many works by Thomas Carlyle

Thomas Carlyle

Thomas Carlyle was a Scottish satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher during the Victorian era.He called economics "the dismal science", wrote articles for the Edinburgh Encyclopedia, and became a controversial social commentator.Coming from a strict Calvinist family, Carlyle was...

 into French.

In 1911, he became vice president of the literary section of the Breton Regionalist Union

Breton Regionalist Union

The Breton regionalist union , was a Breton cultural and political organisation created August 16 1898. It was a broadly conservative grouping dedicated to preserving Breton cultural identity and regional independence...

. In the same year he was one of the founders of the Breton Nationalist Party

Breton Nationalist Party

The Breton Nationalist Party was a French political party that advocated independence for Brittany. It existed from 1911 to 1914.-Origins:...

, and an editor of its journal Breiz Dishual ("Free Brittany"). He was the founder in 1913 of the journal Brug, an anarchist magazine in the Breton language. At this time he defined himself as a libertarian socialist. A fierce Internationalist, he tried to reconcile this aspect of his thinking with his Breton nationalism.

Publications

• Yves Madec, professeur de collège, 1905
• Brenn (pseudonym of Emile Masson), Les rebelles, Librairie les pages libres, 1908
• Les Bretons et le Socialisme, Éditions Toullec et Geffroy 1912, introduction and notes by Jean-Yves Guiomar, Paris, Maspero
  François Maspero
  François Maspero ) is a French author and journalist, best known as a publisher of leftist books in the 1970s. He has also worked as a translator, translating the works of Joseph Conrad and John Reed, author of Ten Days that Shook the World, among others...
  
  , 1972.
• Les hommes illustres et leurs paroles inouïes, en 1919
• L’Utopie des îles bienheureuses dans le Pacifique. Éditions Rieder 1921, Editions Caligrammes, 1984.