Rene Gosinni

René Goscinny was a French writer and publisher, best known as the author of the series of stories about the adventures of Little Nicolas (together with Jean-Jacques Sempé) and as one of the creators of the comic strip about Asterix.

René was born into the family of Polish emigrants Stanisław and Anna Goscinny (Bereznyak). When he was two years old, the family moved to Argentina, where his father found work as a chemical engineer; René studied in Buenos Aires at a French school. In 1943, immediately after René finished school, his father died, and the 17-year-old Goscinny had to support the family. René worked as an assistant accountant and as a junior artist in an advertising agency. In 1945, Goscinny and his mother moved to New York to join relatives. Here René was due to be drafted into the American army, but he preferred to serve in the French army and went to Europe; during his military service Goscinny was the regiment’s artist. After completing his service, Goscinny returned to New York. Beginning in 1948, Goscinny’s professional career gradually began to improve. René became the chief artist of the small publishing house Kunen Publishers, which issued four of his children’s books. This period also saw Goscinny’s acquaintance with many major comic-strip authors with whom he would later work closely, above all Maurice de Bévère (Morris), the creator of Lucky Luke, for whom Goscinny wrote texts from 1955 to 1977.

In 1951, René Goscinny left for Paris again as a correspondent for one of New York’s news agencies. There he worked intensively as a journalist, author of texts and drawings for various publications, and in 1955, together with Jean-Michel Charlier and Albert Uderzo, he founded the publishing house Edipress/Edifrance, which for several years published a number of lightweight magazines that printed many comics.

In 1959, Edipress/Edifrance launched a new magazine, Pilote, for whose first issue Goscinny began his most famous comic series, Asterix. At the same time, he drew or wrote texts for another dozen or