Auguste Vacquerie
Encyclopedia
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
journalist
Journalist
A journalist collects and distributes news and other information. A journalist's work is referred to as journalism.A reporter is a type of journalist who researchs, writes, and reports on information to be presented in mass media, including print media , electronic media , and digital media A...
and man of letters.
Biography
Vacquerie was born at VillequierVillequier
Villequier is a commune in the Seine-Maritime department in the Haute-Normandie region in northern France.-Geography:A village of farming and forestry situated by the banks of the river Seine in the Pays de Caux, some west of Rouen near the junction of the D281 with the D81...
(Seine-Maritime
Seine-Maritime
Seine-Maritime is a French department in the Haute-Normandie region in northern France. It is situated on the northern coast of France, at the mouth of the Seine, and includes the cities of Rouen and Le Havre...
) on 19 November 1819. He was from his earliest days an admirer of Victor Hugo
Victor Hugo
Victor-Marie Hugo was a Frenchpoet, playwright, novelist, essayist, visual artist, statesman, human rights activist and exponent of the Romantic movement in France....
, with whom he was connected by the marriage of his brother Charles
Charles Vacquerie
Charles Vacquerie was a notable figure in the circle of Victor Hugo, his father-in-law.-Life:...
with Léopoldine Hugo
Léopoldine Hugo
Léopoldine Cécile Marie-Pierre Catherine Hugo, born in Paris 28 August 1824 and died in Villequier on 4 September 1843, was the daughter of novelist, poet and dramatist Victor Hugo and his wife, Adèle Foucher....
. His earlier romantic
Romanticism
Romanticism was an artistic, literary and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Europe, and gained strength in reaction to the Industrial Revolution...
productions include a volume of poems, L'Enfer de l'esprit (1840); a translation of the Antigone
Antigone (Sophocles)
Antigone is a tragedy by Sophocles written in or before 442 BC. Chronologically, it is the third of the three Theban plays but was written first...
(1844) in collaboration with Paul Meurice
Paul Meurice
Paul Meurice was a French novelist and playwright best known for his friendship with Victor Hugo.- Biography :...
; and Tragaldabas (1848), a melodrama
Melodrama
The term melodrama refers to a dramatic work that exaggerates plot and characters in order to appeal to the emotions. It may also refer to the genre which includes such works, or to language, behavior, or events which resemble them...
. He was one of the principal contributors to the journal L'Événement and followed Hugo into his exile in Jersey
Jersey
Jersey, officially the Bailiwick of Jersey is a British Crown Dependency off the coast of Normandy, France. As well as the island of Jersey itself, the bailiwick includes two groups of small islands that are no longer permanently inhabited, the Minquiers and Écréhous, and the Pierres de Lecq and...
in 1852, where he took photographs of the Hugo family and relatives. In 1869 he returned to Paris, and with Meurice and others founded the anti-imperial Rappel. His articles in this paper were more than once the occasion of legal proceedings. After 1870 he became editor of Rappel.
His other works include Souvent homme varie (1859), a comedy in verse; Jean Baudry (1863), the most successful of his plays; Aujourd'hui et demain (1875); Futura (pub. 1900), and poems on philosophical and humanitarian subjects. He published a collected edition of his plays in 1879 and a collection of essays in 1885.
Vacquerie died in Paris on 19 February 1895.
In the year of his death, the rue Auguste-Vacquerie, in the 16th arrondissement of Paris, was named in his honor.