Of Illustrious Men

De Viris Illustribus is a collection of short biographies of 135 authors, written in Latin, by the 4th-century Latin Church Father Jerome. He completed this work at Bethlehem in 392-3 AD. The work consists of a prologue plus 135 chapters, each consisting of a brief biography.

De Viris Illustribus is a collection of short biographies of 135 authors, written in Latin, by the 4th-century Latin Church Father Jerome. He completed this work at Bethlehem in 392-3 AD. The work consists of a prologue plus 135 chapters, each consisting of a brief biography.

Often cited as a source of biographical information on ancient Christian authors, On Illustrious Men provides St. Jerome's personal evaluations of his forebears and contemporaries, as well as catalogs of patristic writings known to him

Hailed as a masterpiece, Jean Rouaud’s first novel, Fields of Glory, was awarded France’s most prestigious literary prize, the Prix Goncourt, and sold over a million copies worldwide. Of Illustrious Men establishes as fact what the first novel promised—that Rouaud is a writer of remarkable power, subtlety, and originality. Lovingly set in the same region as Fields of Glory, the novel is about the author’s father, Joseph, and a traveling salesman who died at forty-one and left a family in shock behind him. In the mind of the grieving eleven-year-old son—too young to have really known him—his father was a hero, a warrior, a legend of the Resistance during World War II. But the narrator is no longer that eleven-year-old boy; he is a mature and gifted writer. And though he may still ache for the loss of his father, he also knows that Joseph’s illustriousness can be found not only in the heady days of wartime glory but in moments of domestic tranquility. Of Illustrious Men evokes scenes of both war and peace with exquisite beauty and understated and poignant tenderness. Skyhorse Publishing, as well as our Arcade, Yucca, and Good Books imprints, are proud to publish a broad range of books for readers interested in fiction—novels, novellas, political and medical thrillers, comedy, satire, historical fiction, romance, erotic and love stories, mystery, classic literature, folklore and mythology, literary classics including Shakespeare, Dumas, Wilde, Cather, and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.

Reprint of the original, first published in 1857.