Octave Feuillet - Overview, Academie, Reference

Novelist and playwright, born in Saint-Lô, NW France. His novels include Le Roman d'un jeune homme pauvre (1858) and Histoire d'une Parisienne (1881). He also wrote plays, such as Le Sphynx (1874), and memoirs. He married his cousin Valérie Marie Elvire Dubois (1832–1906).

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Octave Feuillet (August 11, 1821 - December 29, 1890), French novelist and dramatist, was born at Saint-Lô, Manche.

Overview

He was the son of a Norman gentleman of learning and distinction, who would have played a great part in politics sans ses diables de nerfs, as Guizot said.

In 1840 he appeared before his father at Saint-Lô, and announced that he had determined to adopt the profession of literature. There was a stormy scene, and the elder Feuillet cut off his son, who returned to Paris and lived as best he could by a scanty journalism.

Enjoying a liberal allowance, he now lived in Paris in comfort and independence, and he published his early novels, none of which is quite of sufficient value to retain the modern reader. Feuillet, however, having still further declined, he summoned his son to leave Paris and bury himself as his constant attendant in the melancholy château at Saint-Lô.

In 1851 he married his cousin, Mlle Valerie Feuillet, who helped him to endure the mournful captivity to which his filial duty bound him. His first definite success was gained in the year 1852, when he published the novel Bellak and produced the comedy La Crise. He wrote books which have long held their place, La Petite Comtesse (1857), Dalila (1857), and in particular that universal favorite, Le Roman d'un jeune homme pauvre (1858).

He himself fell into a nervous state in his prison, but he was sustained by the devotion and intelligence of his wife and her mother. In 1857, having been persuaded to make a play of the novel of Dalila, he brought out this piece at the Vaudeville, and enjoyed a brilliant success;

To his infinite chagrin, during this brief absence his father died.

Feuillet did not abandon the novel, and in 1862 he achieved a great success with Sibylle.

Academie

He was elected to the French Academy in 1862, and in 1868 he was made librarian of Fontainebleau palace, where he had to reside for a month or two in each year.

Among the too-numerous writings of Feuillet, the novels have lasted longer than the dramas;

Few have written French with greater purity than Feuillet, and his style, reserved in form and never excessive in ornament, but full of wit and delicate animation, is in admirable uniformity with his subjects and his treatment. It is probably in Sibylle and in Julia de Trécœur that he can now be studied to most advantage, though Monsieur de Camors gives a greater sense of power, and though Le Roman d'un jeune homme pauvre still preserves its popularity.

Reference

This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.