Her subsequent collection of poetry, Le Tombeau des rois, was published in 1953 and her first novel, Les chambres de bois, in 1958 signaled a significant shift in style and content for Québécois literature. After publishing the collection at her own expense in 1950, she moved to Paris to escape the repressive Quebec society of the time and find a more receptive audience for her work. These two events would help shape her poetic vision, full of images of death and drowning.Īfter publishing her first collection of poems, Les songes en équilibres, which won Le prix David, she could not find a publisher for her collection of short stories, Le torrent. In 1952, her only sister Marie died suddenly of an illness. Another crucial person in Hébert’s life was her cousin, Hector de Saint-Denys Garneau (1912-43), a poet, who died of a heart attack at the age of 31. She started to write poetry in her teens under the tutelage of her father, Maurice-Lang Hébert (1888-1960), a provincial civil servant and a distinguished literary critic. Anne Hébert was born in Sainte-Catherine-de-Fossambault on August 1, 1916.
