Pierre Corneille was born on 6 June 1606 in Rouen, a citizen of the Kingdom of France. He received his education at what is now known as the Lycée Pierre-Corneille, the institution in that city that would later bear his name. Throughout his working life he occupied several professional roles simultaneously, serving as a jurist and poet lawyer while also writing, translating, and producing work for the stage — a combination that gave his career an unusually wide range.

Corneille wrote in French and worked across multiple dramatic genres, among them comedy, tragicomedy, and tragedy, placing him within the Neoclassicist movement of his era. Le Cid stands as one of his notable works, a title that has remained attached to his name across the centuries. His engagement with these varied forms kept him active as a playwright and poet across a long stretch of the seventeenth century.

Corneille died on 1 October 1684 in Paris. The Library of Congress authority file records him under the designation "Corneille, Pierre, 1606–1684," a label that frames the span of a working life conducted entirely in the French language and across the dramatic and legal worlds of his time.