André Maurois is a famous French writer, member of the French Academy, a classic of French literature of the 20th century. His creative heritage is extensive and multifaceted - psychological novels, short stories, travel essays, historical and literary works, etc. But above all, Maurois is a recognized master of novelized biographies of Dumas, Balzac, Victor Hugo, etc. And therefore the writer’s appeal to the genre of literary portrait - his a kind of mini-biography, a short essay dedicated to one or another colleague in the shop, was not accidental. By combining essays into cycles, Maurois built his history of the development of literature. This book combines literary portraits of mainly French writers (Voltaire, Rousseau, Stendhal, Balzac, Flaubert, Valery, de Saint-Exupéry, etc.), but it also contains essays about Goethe, Dickens, Leo Tolstoy. The objectivity and erudition of the scientist are organically combined with the skill of presentation and accuracy of psychological observations. Maurois perfectly conveys the contradictory characters of his heroes and reveals the complex nature of creativity. This publication consists of two author's collections of 1964 - “From Labruyère to Proust” and “From Proust to Camus.”