Suzanne Lilar
Baroness Suzanne Lilar (née Suzanne Verbist; 21 May 1901 – 11 December 1992[1]) was a Flemish Belgian essayist, novelist, and playwright. She wrote in French. She was the wife of the Belgian Minister of Justice Albert Lilar and mother of the writer Françoise Mallet-Joris and the art historian Marie Fredericq-Lilar.
Suzanne Lilar | |
|---|---|
 Suzanne Lilar in the 1980s | |
| Born | Suzanne Verbist 21 May 1901 |
| Died | 12 December 1992 (aged 91) |
| Nationality | Belgian |
| Occupation | essayist, novelist, playwright |
She was a member of the Royal Academy of French Language and Literature from 1952 to 1992.
In 1919 Lilar attended the State University of Ghent. She studied philosophy and was the first woman to receive a Law degree in 1925. She moved to Antwerp where she became the first woman lawyer. In 1929 she married the lawyer Albert Lilar who would later become a Minister of Justice and Minister of State. After the death of her husband in 1976, she left Antwerp and moved to Brussels in 1977.
Lilar began her literary career as a journalist. She reported on Republican Spain for the newspaper L'Indépendance belge in 1931. She later became a playwright with Le Burlador (1946). It was an original reinterpretation of the myth of Don Juan. It was told from the female perspective. She wrote two more plays, Tous les chemins mènent au ciel (1947), a theological drama set in a 14th-century convent, and Le Roi lépreux (1951), a play about the Crusades.