Charles Ferdinand Ramuz (24 September 1878 – 23 May 1947) was a French-speaking Swiss writer.
He was born in Lausanne in the canton of Vaud and was educated at the University of Lausanne. He taught briefly in nearby Aubonne, and then in Weimar, Germany. In 1903, he left for Paris and remained there until World War I, with frequent trips home to Switzerland. As part of his studies in Paris he wrote a thesis on the poet Maurice de Guérin. In 1903, he published Le petit village, a collection of poems.
In 1914, he returned to Switzerland.
He wrote the libretto for Igor Stravinsky's Histoire du soldat.
He died in Pully, near Lausanne in 1947. His likeness and an artistic impression of his works appear on the 200 Swiss franc note (no longer in current use).
The Foundation C.F. Ramuz in Pully awards the Grand Prix C. F. Ramuz.
Aimé Pache, peintre vaudois (1911)
La Guerre dans le Haut Pays (1915)
Le règne de l'esprit malin (1917) / The Reign of the Evil One, translated by James Whitall (Onesuch Press, 2014)
La guérison des malades (1917)
Présence de la mort (1922) / translated as The End of All Men, by Allan Ross Macdougall (Pantheon Books Inc., 1944) and as Into the Sun, by Olivia Baes and Emma Ramadan (New Directions, 2025)
La séparation des races (1922)
Chant de notre Rhône.(1920) / Riversong of the Rhone, translated by Patti M. Marxsen (Onesuch Press, 2015)
La grande peur dans la montagne (1926) / Terror on the Mountain, translated by Milton Stansbury (Harcourt, Brace & World, 1967) / Great Fear on the Mountain, translated by Bill Johnston (Archipelago Books, 2024)
La beauté sur la terre (1927) / Beauty on Earth, translated by Michelle Bailat-Jones (Onesuch Press, 2014)
Farinet, ou la fausse monnaie (1932)
Derborence (1934) / When the Mountain Fell, translated by Sarah Fisher Scott (Pantheon Books, 1947)
Si le soleil ne revenait pas... (1937) / What If the Sun..., translated by Michelle Bailat-Jones (Onesuch Press, 2015)