Philippe Soupault Biography | Poet

Philippe Soupault (2 August 1897, Chaville, Hauts-de-Seine – 12 March 1990, Paris ) was a French writer and poet, novelist, critic, and political activist. He was active in Dadaism and later founded the Surrealist movement with André Breton. Soupault initiated the periodical Littérature together with the writers Breton and Louis Aragon in Paris in 1919, which, for many, marks the beginnings of Surrealism. The first book of automatic writing, Les champs magnétiques (1920), was co-authored by Soupault and Breton. He directed Radio Tunis from 1937 to 1940, when he was arrested by the pro-Vichy regime. He fled successfully to Algiers .