1897 in France

Incumbents

• President: Félix Faure
• President of the Council of Ministers: Jules Méline

  Events

• 4 May – Bazar de la Charité Fire.
• 9 December – First issue of the feminist newspaper La Fronde is published by Marguerite Durand.
• Alexandre Darracq begins manufacture of motor vehicles at A. Darracq et Cie in the Paris suburb of Suresnes.

  Arts and literature

• At Giverny, Claude Monet begins painting his Water Lilies series, which will continue until the end of his life.
• 28 December – The play Cyrano de Bergerac, by Edmond Rostand, premieres in Paris.

  Births

January to June

• 21 January – René Iché, sculptor
• 30 March – Raymond Borderie, film producer
• 4 April – Pierre Fresnay, actor
• 1 May – Aimée Antoinette Camus, botanist
• 27 May – Lucien Cailliet, composer, conductor, arranger and clarinetist

  July to September

• 3 July – Charles Tillon, politician
• 25 July – André Muffang, chess master
• 2 August – Philippe Soupault, poet, novelist, critic and political activist
• 19 August – Norbert Casteret, caver and adventurer
• 10 September – Georges Bataille, writer
• 12 September
• * Pierre Courant, politician
• * Irène Joliot-Curie, scientist, shared the Nobel Prize for chemistry in 1935
• 13 September – Michel Saint-Denis, actor, theatre director, and drama theorist

  October to December

• 3 October – Louis Aragon, poet and novelist
• 16 October – Louis de Cazenave, at the time of his death, the oldest French poilu still alive
• 18 October – Martha Desrumeaux, militant communist and member of the French Resistance
• 24 November – François Ducaud-Bourget, priest
• 27 November – André Couder, optician and astronomer
• 3 December – André Marie, politician and Prime Minister of France
• 7 December – Lazare Ponticelli, last surviving official French veteran of the First World War
• 19 December – Louis Darquier de Pellepoix, Commissioner for Jewish Affairs under the Vichy Régime
• 20 December – Jacques de Bernonville, collaborationist and senior police officer in the Vichy regime
• 25 December – Noël Delberghe, water polo player and Olympic medallist

  Undated

• Georges Périnal, cinematographer

  Deaths

• 13 January – Charles Brun, naval engineer
• 20 March – Augustin Marie Morvan, physician, politician and writer
• 30 May – Jeanne Sylvanie Arnould-Plessy, actress
• 19 June – Louis Brière de l'Isle, Military officer and colonial governor
• 5 July – Edmond-Frederic Le Blant, archaeologist and historian
• 6 July – Henri Meilhac, dramatist and opera librettist
• 20 September – Louis Pierre Mouillard, aeronautical engineer
• 30 September – Thérèse de Lisieux, Roman Catholic Carmelite nun, canonised as a saint
• 6 November – Edouard Deldevez, violinist, conductor and composer
• 28 November – Léonard-Léopold Forgemol de Bostquénard, general
• 6 December – Oscar Bardi de Fourtou, politician
• 16 December – Alphonse Daudet, novelist
• Undated – François-Louis Français, painter