Joseph Fiévée was a French

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...

, novelist, essayist, playwright, civil servant (haut fonctionnaire) and secret agent. He also lived in an openly gay

Gay

Gay is a word that refers to a homosexual person, especially a homosexual male. For homosexual women the specific term is "lesbian"....

 relationship with the writer Théodore Leclercq, with whom he was buried after his death.

Career

The son of a Parisian restaurant owner, Joseph Fiévée became a publisher during the French Revolution

French Revolution

The French Revolution , sometimes distinguished as the 'Great French Revolution' , was a period of radical social and political upheaval in France and Europe. The absolute monarchy that had ruled France for centuries collapsed in three years...

, most notably editing La Chronique de Paris, a newspaper; it was here that he started his career as journalist, but unfortunately incurred the suspicion of authorities who had him imprisoned during the Reign of Terror

Reign of Terror

The Reign of Terror , also known simply as The Terror , was a period of violence that occurred after the onset of the French Revolution, incited by conflict between rival political factions, the Girondins and the Jacobins, and marked by mass executions of "enemies of...

. He was a member of the royalist network around the Abbey de Montesquiou, and was forced to go into hiding during the Directoire. While in hiding, he wrote his novel on on changing times and mores, La Dot de Suzette, which was a great literary success.

From 1800 to 1803, he wrote a column for the Gazette de France. He was again imprisoned in the Temple (Paris)

Temple (Paris)

The Temple was a medieval fortress in Paris, located in what is now the IIIe arrondissement. It was built by the Knights Templar from the 12th century, as their European headquarters. In the 13th century it replaced earlier works of the Vieille Temple in Le Marais...

 by order of Joseph Fouché

Joseph Fouché

Joseph Fouché, 1st Duc d'Otrante was a French statesman and Minister of Police under Napoleon Bonaparte. In English texts his title is often translated as Duke of Otranto.-Youth:Fouché was born in Le Pellerin, a small village near Nantes...

, but he was freed at the request of Bonaparte. He became a kind of secret agent for Napoleon, informing him of political affairs in France and England.

From 1804 to 1807, he was editor in chief of the Journal des débats, which became Journal de l'Empire. He was ennobled by the Emperor; was named "maître des requêtes" to the Conseil d’État in 1810; then "Préfet" of the Nièvre

Nièvre

Nièvre is a department in the centre of France named after the Nièvre River.-History:Nièvre is one of the original 83 departments created during the French Revolution on March 4, 1790...

 départment from 1813 to 1815.

A supporter of Louis XVIII of France

Louis XVIII of France

Louis XVIII , known as "the Unavoidable", was King of France and of Navarre from 1814 to 1824, omitting the Hundred Days in 1815...

 during the initial Restoration, he was banished during the Hundred Days

Hundred Days

The Hundred Days, sometimes known as the Hundred Days of Napoleon or Napoleon's Hundred Days for specificity, marked the period between Emperor Napoleon I of France's return from exile on Elba to Paris on 20 March 1815 and the second restoration of King Louis XVIII on 8 July 1815...

. Having become one of the intellectuals of the "ultra" party and writer for the papers La Quotidienne and the Conservateur, he eventually became more politically liberal after 1818. A strong supporter of the freedom of the press, he was sentenced to three months of prison in the Conciergerie

Conciergerie

La Conciergerie is a former royal palace and prison in Paris, France, located on the west of the Île de la Cité, near the Cathedral of Notre-Dame. It is part of the larger complex known as the Palais de Justice, which is still used for judicial purposes...

 where Casimir Perier

Casimir Pierre Perier

Casimir Pierre Perier was a French statesman, President of the Council during the July Monarchy, when he headed the conservative Parti de la résistance .-Life:...

 visited him.

He became a contributor to the journals Temps in 1829 and National in 1831.

Private life

Joseph Fiévée married in 1790 (his brother-in-law was Charles Frédéric Perlet), but his wife died giving birth, leaving him one child. At the end of the 1790s, he met the writer Théodore Leclercq who became his life compagnon, and the two would live and raise Fiévée's son together. When becoming Préfet, Fiévée and Leclercq moved to the Nièvre province, and their open relationship greatly shocked the locals. The two men were received together in the salons

Salon (gathering)

A salon is a gathering of people under the roof of an inspiring host, held partly to amuse one another and partly to refine taste and increase their knowledge of the participants through conversation. These gatherings often consciously followed Horace's definition of the aims of poetry, "either to...

 of the Restoration.

Both men are buried together in the same tomb at the Père Lachaise cemetery.

Works

Novels :

• La Dot de Suzette (1798) (BNF 1)
• Frédéric (1799) (BNF 2)

Letters :

• Lettres sur l'Angleterre (1803)
• , Ed. Le Normant (1816)
• Lettres sur le projet d'organisation municipale (présentées à la Chambre des Députés le 21 février 1821), Le Normant (1821)
• , en 3 volumes, Ed. Desrez et Beauvais (1836)

Essays :

• De la religion considérée dans ses rapports avec le but de toute législation (1795)
• Du dix-huit brumaire opposé au système de la Terreur (1802) (BNF 3)
• Réflexions sur la philosophie du XVIIIe siècle, Ed. Perlet-Desenne (1802)
• Conseils à Napoléon 1802-1803
• Des opinions et des intérêts pendant la Révolution (1809)
• Histoire de la session de 1815, Ed. L'Huillier-Delaunay (1816)
• Histoire de la session de 1816, Le Normant (1817)
• Histoire de la session de 1817, Le Normant (1818)
• Examen des discussions relatives à la loi des élections pendant la session de 1819, Le Normant (1820)
• Histoire de la session de 1820, Le Normant (1821)
• Ce que tout le monde pense, ce que personne ne dit, Le Normant (1821)
• De l'Espagne et des conséquences de l'intervention armée (1823)
• Causes et conséquences du mois de juillet 1830 (1830)

Short Stories:

• Le divorce, le faux révolutionnaire et l’héroïsme des femmes, Ed. A. Duleau (1802)

Theatre :

• La maison à vendre (1789)
• Le badinage dangereux (1789)
• Les rigueurs du cloître (1790)