G. Bruno (1833–1923)

Augustine Tuillerie was born in Laval, a town in western France in the department of Mayenne, a daughter of Auguste André Tuillerie, a fabric manufacturer, and his wife Adèle Leroy. In 1853, at about age 20, she married Jean Guyau and had a son who became the philosopher Jean-Marie Guyau. However, her husband was abusive and she left him. She began writing books to teach reading and the principles of ethics and civic responsibility to children, some in the form of novels. Her pen name "G. Bruno" was supposedly inspired by the Italian philosopher and writer Giordano Bruno. In 1869, she published Francinet, a coming-of-age story about a teenager that won the Prix Montyon from the Académie française. She wrote Le Tour de la France par deux enfants (The Tour of France by Two Children, 1877), which used geography and history in a story of two brothers traveling the provinces of France. It became a bestseller and required reading in French schools for many years. It was so popular it was adapted into a silent film and later twice into a television series. She continued with these ideas in Les Enfants de Marcel (1887) and other works, including Le Tour de l'Europe pendant la guerre (1916), a sequel to Le Tour de la France with the same characters.
Augustine lived for decades with philosopher Alfred Jules Émile Fouillée, but the couple could not marry until divorce became legal after 1884. She and Fouillée were considered leading intellectuals of the Third Republic.