Octave Feuillet
Encyclopedia
Octave Feuillet 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...

 novelist and dramatist.

Overview

Octave Feuillet was born at Saint-Lô
Saint-Lô
Saint-Lô is a commune in north-western France, the capital of the Manche department in Normandy.-History:Originally called Briovère , the town is built on and around ramparts. Originally it was a Gaul fortified settlement...

, Manche
Manche
Manche is a French department in Normandy named after La Manche , which is the French name for the English Channel.- History :Manche is one of the original 83 departments created during the French Revolution on March 4, 1790...

 (Normandy
Normandy
Normandy is a geographical region corresponding to the former Duchy of Normandy. It is in France.The continental territory covers 30,627 km² and forms the preponderant part of Normandy and roughly 5% of the territory of France. It is divided for administrative purposes into two régions:...

). His father Jacques Feuillet was a prominent lawyer and Secretary-General of La Manche, but also a hypersensitive invalid. His mother died when he was an infant. Feuillet inherited some of his father's nervous excitability, though not to the same degree. He was sent to Lycée Louis-le Grand, in Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

, where he achieved high distinction, and was destined for the diplomatic service.

In 1840 he told his father that he planned to be a writer instead, and the elder Feuillet disowned his son. Octave Feuillet returned to Paris and lived as best he could by becoming a journalist. In company with Paul Bocage
Paul Bocage
Paul Auguste Tousez, known as Paul Bocage, was a French librettist, novelist and dramatist....

 he wrote the plays Echec et mat, Palma ou la nuit de Vendredi saint, and La Vieillesse de Richelieu. His father forgave him three years later and granted him an allowance. Feuillet enjoyed a comfortable existence in Paris and published his first novels.

The health of the elder M. Feuillet declined further, and he summoned his son to leave Paris and attend to him at Saint-Lô. This was a great sacrifice, but Octave Feuillet obeyed. In 1851, he married his cousin Valérie Feuillet (née Dubois), who was also a writer. During his "exile" in Saint-Lô (rendered irksome by his father's mania for solitude and tyrannical temper), Feuillet produced some of his best work. His first definite success came in 1852, when he published the novel Bellah and produced the comedy La Crise. Both were reprinted from the Revue des deux mondes
Revue des deux mondes
The Revue des deux Mondes is a French language monthly literary and cultural affairs magazine that has been published in Paris since 1829....

, where many of his later novels also appeared. Other acclaimed works are La Petite Comtesse (1857), Dalila (1857), and the popular Le Roman d'un jeune homme pauvre (1858).

Feuillet himself fell into a nervous state at Saint-Lô, but his wife and mother-in-law's devotion helped sustain him. In 1857, he finally returned to Paris to oversee the rehearsal of a play he had adapted from his novel Dalila. The following year, he did the same thing when Un jeune homme pauvre was rehearsing. Unfortunately, his father died at this time when he was away from home.

Feuillet and his family immediately moved to Paris and became a favorite at the court of the Second Empire
Second French Empire
The Second French Empire or French Empire was the Imperial Bonapartist regime of Napoleon III from 1852 to 1870, between the Second Republic and the Third Republic, in France.-Rule of Napoleon III:...

. His pieces were performed at Compiègne
Compiègne
Compiègne is a city in northern France. It is designated municipally as a commune within the département of Oise.The city is located along the Oise River...

 before they were given to the public, and on one occasion the empress Eugénie played the part of Mme de Pons in Les Portraits de la Marquise.

Feuillet did not abandon the novel, and in 1862 he achieved a great success with Sibylle. His health, however, had by this time begun to decline, affected by the death of his eldest son. He left Paris for the quieter Normandy
Normandy
Normandy is a geographical region corresponding to the former Duchy of Normandy. It is in France.The continental territory covers 30,627 km² and forms the preponderant part of Normandy and roughly 5% of the territory of France. It is divided for administrative purposes into two régions:...

. The old chateau of the family had been sold, but he bought a house called Les Paillers in the suburbs of Saint-Lô, and there he lived, buried in his roses, for fifteen years.

Academie

He was elected to the French Academy
Académie française
L'Académie française , also called the French Academy, is the pre-eminent French learned body on matters pertaining to the French language. The Académie was officially established in 1635 by Cardinal Richelieu, the chief minister to King Louis XIII. Suppressed in 1793 during the French Revolution,...

 in 1862, and in 1868 he was made librarian of Fontainebleau
Fontainebleau
Fontainebleau is a commune in the metropolitan area of Paris, France. It is located south-southeast of the centre of Paris. Fontainebleau is a sub-prefecture of the Seine-et-Marne department, and it is the seat of the arrondissement of Fontainebleau...

palace, where he had to reside for a month or two in each year. In 1867 he produced his masterpiece Monsieur de Camors, and in 1872 he wrote Julia de Trécœur. He spent his last years, after the sale of Les Paillers, in ceaseless wandering, due to his depression and ill health. He died in Paris on the 29th of December 1890. His last book was Honneur d'artiste (1890).

Feuillet holds a place midway between the romanticists and the realists. He is renowned for his "distinguished and lucid portraiture of life," depictions of female characters, analyses of characters' psychologies and feelings, and his excellent, reserved but witty prose style.

External links

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