Edmund Eugene Alexis Rostand (April 1, 1868 – December to 1918) was a French poet and playwright best known for his play Cyrano de Bergerac. Rostand was born in Marseilles to a wealthy Provençal family. His father was an economist, poet, and a member of the Institut de France. Rostand studied history, literature, and philosophy at the Collège Stanislas in Paris. His first play, a one-act comedy, was published and performed in 1888 to little notice. In 1890 published a volume of poems, Les Musardises. He wrote a three-act play in verse for the Théâtre François entitled Les Romanesque’s that debuted in 1894 and was adapted in 1960 into the long-running Broadway musical The Fantasticks. He then wrote two plays featuring Sarah Bernhardt before the debut of his heroic comedy Cyrano de Bergerac in December 1897, which became a massive hit and played for over 300 consecutive nights. He wrote L’ Aiglon in 1900 for Sarah Bernhard to perform during the Exposition Universelle in Paris. In 1902 he became the youngest writer ever elected to the Académie française. In 1903 he relocated to the Basque Pyrenees in 1903 for health reasons. In 1910 he wrote Chantecler for the famous actor Constant Coquelin, which is considered the great play of his maturity. He was still writing when he died prematurely at age 50. “La Dernière Nuit de Don Juan” (The Last Night of Don Juan) was performed posthumously in 1922. In addition, there were two unfinished and unpublished plays, Yorick and Les Petites Manies.