Michel-Jean Sedaine

Playwright, born in Paris, France. The son of a mason, and a stonemason himself, he published a collection of verse (1752) and wrote light opera librettos (1756). Ruined financially by the Revolution, he was forced to leave the Académie Française, having been elected there in 1786. His most lasting work is the play Le Philosophe sans le savoir (1765), a domestic comedy in the drame bourgeois genre which presents an idealized sentimental view of middle-class life and values.

Michel-Jean Sedaine (July 4, 1719 – May 17, 1797), French dramatist, was born at Paris.

Except these two pieces little or nothing of his has kept the stage or the shelves, but Sedaine may be regarded as the literary ancestor of Scribe and Dumas.

Sedaine, who became a member of the Academy (1786), and secretary for architecture of the fine arts division, died at Paris on the 17th of May 1797.