Edmonde Charles-Roux, storied French author, dies at 95

PARIS – Edmonde Charles-Roux, a French writer who was among the founding editors of Elle magazine and a longtime editor of Vogue before turning to literature, has died. She was 95.

The Academie Goncourt, whose prize she won with her novel “To Forget Palermo,” said she died late Wednesday in her hometown of Marseille.

The daughter of a diplomat who spent most of her childhood outside France, Charles-Roux obtained a nursing degree in 1939 when World War II broke out. She was wounded in a bombing in 1940 and ultimately was honoured by the French Foreign Legion.

At the war’s end, she worked for the newly founded Elle, before ultimately becoming chief editor of Vogue until 1966. She was forced out, according to the newspaper Le Monde, when she wanted to put a nonwhite woman on the magazine’s cover. Her first novel was published that year to acclaim.

She went on to write biographies as well as fiction, before becoming first a member of the Academie Goncourt and then its president.