Background
In October 1914, Georges Simenon commenced his studies at the College Saint-Luis. After one year, he switched to College St Servais where he studied for 3 years. He achieved excellence in French but started failing in other subjects. He read a lot in English classics, Russian and French.
In June 1918, Simenon quit school and never took his end-of-year examinations. He embarked on working at bookshops and became unemployed at the end of the war in 1918.
Career
Georges Simenon started his career as a reporter at the Gazette de Liege. Later he was promoted and smarted reporting on crime. Later he received his own gossip and opinion column. He interviewed people globally including Crown Prince of Japan, Marshal Foch among others.
From 1920 to 1921 he enrolled in a college course to study forensic science at the University of Liege so as to under the latest police methods.
In September 1920 Georges Simenon completed his first novel known as Au Pont Archies which he self-published in 1921.
France between 1922 and 1945
While living in France Simenon was the correspondent of Revue Sincere of Brussels. He wrote articles and sent them for publishing. He also penned short stories for popular magazines.
Georges was writing up to 80 typed pages every day and sold those stories to magazines.
USA and Canada 1945 – 1955
On October 1945 Georges Simenon arrived in New York and later relocated to Canada where he set up his home Montreal.
In 1946 Georges Simenon visited Cuba. He was widely travelled and stayed in one place for considerable time and write his novels as he traveled. He always wrote quickly mostly his writing session commenced at 6 am and ended at 9 am every single day. He produced 4500 words a day. In 1951 he sold 2 million copies of his American paperback.
Simenon lived in Connecticut for five years. While there he wrote 13 Maigret novels. While living here his sales volume increased to 3 million copies a year. He was elected as President of Mystery Writers of America. In 1952 and 54 Simenon made two trips to Europe. During the first trip he gained admission to the Royal Belgian Academy.
Europe
From 1955 to 1989 Simenon and his family returned to Europe. They established their home in France at a place known as Mougins located near Cannes. His first wife Regine and Marc lived in a nearby hotel.
He later relocated to Lisanne in Switzerland where he stayed for seven years. Simenon continued producing 3-5 novels a year. In 1961 Simenon built a home in the heights above Lausanne. The house was completed 3 years later.
Simenon was a steady worker. He however announced his retirement in 1973. He stopped writing but dictated 21 volumes of memoirs. In 1984 Georges Simenon underwent surgery of the brain and recovered well. From 1988 he was always on a wheel chair. He died on September 4, 1989 following a fall.
During his career, he sold over 500 million copies of novels making him one of the most successful novel authors in the world.
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