Philippe Le Sueur Mourant
Encyclopedia
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...
writer who wrote in Jèrriais
Jèrriais
Jèrriais is the form of the Norman language spoken in Jersey, in the Channel Islands, off the coast of France. It has been in decline over the past century as English has increasingly become the language of education, commerce and administration...
and French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
.
He was born in St Saviour
Saint Saviour, Jersey
-Notable sites:*Highlands College*De La Salle College*St. Michael's Preparatory School*Hautlieu School*Grainville Cricket Ground*Grainville School*Jersey Evening Post offices and printing works-External links:**...
in 1848 and spent most of his early life working in agriculture in Newfoundland and Lorient
Lorient
Lorient, or L'Orient, is a commune and a seaport in the Morbihan department in Brittany in north-western France.-History:At the beginning of the 17th century, merchants who were trading with India had established warehouses in Port-Louis...
. He returned to Jersey in 1880 and launched a series of stories in La Nouvelle Chronique de Jersey which took the form of letters supposedly written by Bram Bilo, a naïve and self-important ex-Centenier from St Ouen
Saint Ouen, Jersey
-Cueillettes:Unlike the other parishes of Jersey, the subdivisions of this parish are not named vingtaines, but cueillettes . Vingteniers are still elected, however, in the cueillettes.*La Petite Cueillette*La Grande Cueillette...
. These stories achieved great popularity (some remain classics, such as "Bram Bilo à la vendue" (Bram Bilo at the auction)) and a selection were republished in book form.
Besides writing in Jèrriais in La Nouvelle Chronique de Jersey, he also wrote in French under the pen name Samuel in La Chronique de Jersey.
He killed off his Bram Bilo character, and in 1911 he launched a new set of comical characters, the Pain family, in a series of Jèrriais stories in the English language
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
newspaper Morning News. In contrast to the countryside character of Bram Bilo, the Pains (Peter and Laizé and their hapless daughter Lonore) represented a family moved from the country to the bustling capital of Saint Helier
Saint Helier
Saint Helier is one of the twelve parishes of Jersey, the largest of the Channel Islands in the English Channel. St. Helier has a population of about 28,000, roughly 31.2% of the total population of Jersey, and is the capital of the Island . The urban area of the parish of St...
with its anglicised society and entertainments. Some of the Pain stories were reprinted in La Chronique de Jersey, but the series subsequently transferred to the Evening Post
Jersey Evening Post
The Jersey Evening Post is a regional newspaper published six days a week in the Bailiwick of Jersey. It was printed in broadsheet format for 87 years, though it is now of compact size. Its motto is: "At the heart of island life".-History:The Evening Post was founded in 1890 by H.P...
.