A French poet, novelist and critic, Soupault was active in Paris Dada and Surrealism, founding the review Litterature with Andre Breton and Louis Aragon. By the mid 1920s, he began drifting away from Breton's more theoretical and political approach and was expelled from the Surrealist group in 1926. Among his most important works are his collection of automatic writing The Magnetic Fields, done with Breton in 1919, and his novel Last Nights in Paris (1928).

"Desnos, more than any of us, got closest to the Surrealist truth," wrote Andre Breton in his first manifesto. A member of the Paris Surrealist group, Desnos was known for putting himself into trances at will, and pouring out spontaneous poems, prophecies and artwork. His poetry collection A la mysterieuse (1926) and novel Liberty or Love (1927) are both important contributions to the movement. La Place De L'Etoile (1928), his only play, stands alongside the works of Antonin Artaud and Roger Vitrac as one of the key Surrealist creations for the theatre, while his film script L'Etoile De Mer (1928), co-written and directed by Man Ray, is a milestone in Surrealist cinema. Other literary works by Desnos include the automatically written Mourning for Mourning (1924) and the poems Les Tenebres (1927). In 1944, due to his involvement in the French Resistance, Desnos was arrested by the Gestapo and transported to Terezin, a concentration camp in Czechoslovakia. He died there the following year.

A French poet and screenwriter, Prevert participated in Surrealist activities during the 1920s, though his most famous works were written after his departure from the group. Many of his poems were set to music and sung by prominent French vocalists, such as Edith Piaf and Yves Montand. Among his poetry collections are Paroles (1946), Spectacle (1951) and Rain and Good Weather (1955). As a screenwriter, Prevert often worked with the director Marcel Carne, producing several classic films, including Port of Shadows (1938), Daybreak (1939), The Night Visitors (1942) and The Children of Paradise (1945).

During the early 1920s, Morise co-edited the review Aventure with Jacques Baron, Roger Vitrac and Rene Crevel. Shortly after, he joined the Surrealists, contributing texts to both Litterature and La Revolution Surrealiste. He participated in the group's round table discussions concerning sex in 1928, but was expelled by Breton the following year. Like several other ex-Surrealists, Morise signed the anti-Breton pamphlet Un Cadavre in 1930.

Baron was the youngest of the early surrealists, contributing prose and poetry to both Litterature and La Revolution Surrealiste. Among his published works are L'Allure poetique (1924), Charbon de mer (1935) and Le Noir de l'azur (1946). Unfortunately, little of Baron's writing has been translated into English.

Along with Paul Eluard and Roger Vitrac, Boiffard co-wrote the preface to the first issue of La Revolution Surrealiste in 1924. He also contributed accounts of dreams and automatic texts to the review. Developing an interest in photography, he became Man Ray's assistant during the late 1920s, and provided images for Andre Breton's novel Nadja in 1928, as well as for Georges Bataille's periodical Documents (1929-30). By the 1940s, Boiffard left photography and surrealism behind, becoming a medical doctor, with an emphasis in radiology.

Best known as a painter, whose work greatly influenced later Surrealist artists,
de Chirico also wrote essays, stories and a novel. A Letter to Andre Breton (1922) appeared in the pages of Litterature, while Dream (1924) was featured in La Revolution Surrealiste. De Chirico's novel Hebdomeros (1929) is regarded by some as one of the major works of surrealist fiction.

A French poet, Char joined the Surrealist movement in 1929, collaborating with Andre Breton and Paul Eluard on the collection Ralentir Travaux: Slow Under Construction in 1930. By the middle of the decade, he began to distance himself from the group. Among his other publications are Arsenal (1929), Artine (1930) and Le marteau sans maitre (1934).

Dali is perhaps the most recognizable figure in the history of Surrealism, known for his remarkable paintings, such as The Lugubrious Game (1929), The Great Masturbator (1929) and The Persistence of Memory (1931). He created in a wide variety of different mediums, producing memorable sculptures, holographs, photography, clothing, jewelry, stage scenery and film scripts. He even designed and oversaw the construction of the Dream of Venus, a surrealist funhouse at the 1939 World's Fair, as well as the Dali Theatre and Museum in his home town of Figueres. Along with all of this, Dali was an excellent writer. Among his most important books are the autobiographical The Secret Life of Salvador Dali (1942), Diary of a Genius (1964) and Open Letter to Salvador Dali (1966). He also wrote a collection of prose Oui (1927-33), a novel Hidden Faces (1944) and several theoretical works, including Fifty Secrets of Magic Craftsmanship (1948) and Dali on Modern Art (1957). In 1973, The Unspeakable Confessions of Salvador Dali, a book of "confessions" as told to Andre Parinaud, was published.

One of the most important directors in film history, Bunuel developed close friendships with Salvador Dali and Federico Garcia Lorca during his student years in Madrid, before joining the Paris Surrealists in 1929. Un chien andalou (1929) and L'Age d'Or (1930), both co-written with Dali, are classics of Surrealist cinema. His later films, including El (1952), The Exterminating Angel (1962), The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972) and The Phantom of Liberty (1974) remain faithful to the surrealist spirit, containing a savage sense of humor and a revolt against bourgeois traditions. In addition to collaborating on most of his important film scripts, Bunuel wrote an autobiography My Last Sigh (1982), as well as several shorter prose pieces, which were eventually gathered in the collection An Unspeakable Betrayal (first published in 1995). Illegible, the Son of a Flute, a story begun in 1928 and revised twenty years later, is perhaps his most memorable effort as a writer.

Although Lorca was never a member of the Paris Surrealist group, some of his writing is highly surrealist in nature, perhaps influenced by his close friendships with Luis Bunuel and Salvador Dali. Poet in New York (1929-30) is among the great collections of surrealist poetry, written while Lorca was a student at Columbia University in New York. During this period, he also wrote Trip to the Moon (1929), a film script that shares a great deal in common with Bunuel's and Dali's Un chien andalou, and the surrealist plays The Public (1929-30) and Once Five Years Pass (1931). Surrealist imagery also appears in several of Lorca's other poems, including The Martydom of St. Eulalia from the collection Gypsy Ballads (1926-28) and Lament for Ignacio Sanchez Mejias (1935).

A writer, journalist and screenwriter, Unik participated in Surrealist activities during the 1920s and early 1930s. His story Long Live the Bride! appeared in La Revolution Surrealiste in 1926. A militant Communist, Unik also co-wrote the commentary for Luis Bunuel's film Las Hurdes: Land Without Bread (1932). He died while escaping a concentration camp during World War II.

Lautreamont was a pen name of Isidore Ducasse, a French poet whose only works, Les Chants de Maldoror (1868) and Poesies (1870), had a major influence on the Paris Surrealists. Maldoror, a savage assault on god and humanity, is filled with dream-like images. One of its lines, "as beautiful as the chance meeting on a dissecting table of an umbrella and a sewing machine" foreshadowed the type of imagery captured in surrealist writing of the 1920s. In 1919, the text of Poesies was published in two successive issues of Litterature, while in 1925, a special edition of the Surrealist magazine Le Disque Vert was dedicated to Lautreamont. Numerous members of the Paris group wrote texts on the poet, including Andre Breton, Philippe Soupault, Rene Crevel and Paul Eluard. Among the surrealist artists who created paintings and illustrations inspired by Maldoror are Max Ernst, Salvador Dali, Victor Brauner, Oscar Dominguez, Andre Masson, Joan Miro and Yves Tanguy.

One of the founders of Zurich Dada during the first World War, Tzara wrote several of the movement's manifestos, as well as the Dada texts The First Heavenly Adventure of Mr. Antipyrine (1916) and Twenty-Five Poems (1918). In 1919, he joined forces with Andre Breton's circle in Paris, but was eventually splintered from that group with the advent of Surrealism. By 1929, tired of Dada's nihilism, Tzara rejoined Breton and the Surrealists, participating in a number of their activities.  The Approximate Man, an epic poem written between 1925 and 1930, is considered by many a poetic masterpiece of Surrealism. Other works from his surrealist period include The Antihead (1933) and Seeds and Bran (1935).  

A French writer, philosopher and poet, Daumal, along with Roger Gilbert- Lecomte, founded the review Le Grand Jeu during the late 1920s. Often en- couraged by Andre Breton to join the Surrealists, Daumal chose to follow his own path, maintaining complete independence. His most famous works are the allegorical novels A Night of Serious Drinking (1938) and Mount Analogue: A Novel of Symbolically Authentic Non-Euclidean Adventures in Mountain Climbing (published posthumously in 1952). Daumal died from tuberculosis at the age of 36.

Along with Rene Daumal, Gilbert-Lecomte founded the avant-garde review Le Grand Jeu during the late 1920s. He wrote two collections of poetry: Life Love Death Void and Wind (1933), which received a rave review by Antonin Artaud in the Nouvelle Revue Francaise, and Black Mirror (1934). Like his comrade Daumal, Gilbert-Lecomte died at the age of 36.