This is a bronze medal made by Henry Nocq in France, 1915 to commemorate French writers who had fallen in the Great War. Correspondence from Henry Nocq dated 28 August 1916 to Eric Maclagan reveals that in the previous year the French writer Maurice Barrés commissioned Nocq to design a medal in memory of French writers killed in the war. The families of dead writers would receive a silver medal, and a limited edition of fifty bronze medals was also struck for collections in Europe. Nocq stated categorically that the medal was not and never would be sold commercially. In this way Nocq and Barrés fulfilled the commemorative function of medals, and at the same time, secured the survival of the medal itself in European cultural institutions.

Henry Nocq, also sometimes known as Henri-Eugéne Nocq, was a scholar, critic, sculptor and medalist who studied under Chapu and exhibited regularly at Paris Salons from 1887. Nocq's approach to design intergrates both faces of the medal by completing the obverse legend on the reverse to poignant effect. The soft, drooping posture of the contemplative, mouring figure on the reverse, thought to be derived from ancient coinage, is in marked contrast to the strident shouting figure of the obverse.