Jeanne Antelme was born in Port Louis, Mauritius, on 9 February 1883, into one of the island’s most prominent Franco-Mauritian families. Her grandfather, Sir Célicourt Antelme, was a planter and politician who dominated the colonial legislature for decades.
In 1909 she married André Noblemaire, Deputy Director of the Wagons-Lits company, operators of the Orient Express. The marriage placed her firmly within the French elite.
Her first book, Vivre (To Live), was published in July 1914 under her maiden name. A collection of chronicles ranging from travelogues of the Indian Ocean to essays on desire and domesticity, it unsettled at least one male critic with what he called her “feminist ardour.” Her second book, Soldats de France, followed in 1915 and drew praise; the Queen of England and Queen Alexandra both sent their congratulations to the author.
In August 1915, aged thirty-two, Antelme sailed to the Greek island of Lemnos as a volunteer nurse with the French Red Cross. She was posted to Evacuation Hospital No. 1, the largest hospital on the island with a capacity of 1,800 beds, where she cared for French soldiers evacuated from the Gallipoli peninsula.
Her experiences there became Avec l’armée d’Orient: notes d’une infirmière à Moudros (With the Army of the East: Notes of a Nurse at Mudros), published in 1916 and awarded the Jules Favre Prize by the Académie française.
After the war Antelme largely disappeared from the public record, though exhibition catalogues show she turned to painting and sculpture. Her later life remains undocumented.
