Special Collections and Archives Finding Aids

Biographical Note

Henri Antoine Jules-Bois was an honored scholar known for his plays, poetry, novels and published articles. His writings were exemplary of his interests in experimental psychology, spiritualism (including Catholicism and Hindu philosophy), occultism, theosophy, astronomy and metaphysics, as well as a “latent idealism.”

Jules-Bois was born in Marseilles, France in 1869. He earned A.B. and B.Sc. degrees at the College of St. Ignatius at Aix-en-Provence and Montpellier. He received his Ph.D. and Litt.D. degrees at the College de France and the Sorbonne. His dissertation entailed research on the “superconscious.” Jules-Bois also earned an honorary LL.D. from Providence College in Rhode Island just a few years prior to his death.

In his lifetime, Jules-Bois' numerous writings were affected both creatively and profoundly by his aforementioned interests. Some of his writings included: The Eternal Doll, The New Era, Restless Womanhood, The New Sorrow, The Guture Couple, Mysteries of Evil, Lesser Religions of Paris, The Invisible World, Hyppolitus Crowned, The Fury, The Two Helens, Nail, The Modern Prodigy, The Divine in Man, The Ship, The Eternal Return and the book on which he was working upon his death, The Psychology of the Saints.

Jules-Bois also did a spiritual pilgrimage, and belonged to societies of Astronomy and Psychology. He served as a lecturer and goodwill ambassador in Spain and then in the United States during World War I. Subsequently, Jules-Bois remained in the United States where he coined the term “interpatriotism” in his studies on internationalism and promoted the idea of a “United States of Europe.” He, further, served as a correspondent for a number of newspapers and contributed to several magazines including The Catholic World and The Commonweal. Jules-Bois died in 1943. He had been honored as an Officer of the Legion of Honor of France, Officer of the Order of the Savior, Commander of the Phenix Order of Greece, Knight of the Order of Leopold of Belgium, and Commander of Nichan-Ifticar of Tunisia.