Born in Dublin on 24 January 1709, William Chaigneau spent his professional life as an army agent in Ireland. His claim to literary fame rests on a single, highly regarded novel,

(1752). A sentimental picaresque fiction, influenced by the work of Le Sage, Fielding, and Smollett,

is characteristic of the often experimental prose fiction written in Great Britain and Ireland in the 1750s, while looking forward to future developments in the novel.

Chaigneau was, for most of his life, a resident of the Irish capital, where members of his family were prominent in the Huguenot community that had settled there after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes (1685), which removed the religious and civil rights accorded French Protestants in 1598. In Ireland, the

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Citation: Ross, Ian Campbell. "William Chaigneau". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 16 July 2014 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=13364, accessed 23 November 2024.]