Philippe-Auguste Villiers de L'Isle-Adam

Madeleine Chalmers (University of Oxford)

Ed. by Jennifer Yee, University of Oxford
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.5.2.05: French Writing and Culture: The Nineteenth-Century , 1800-1900.
Vol. editors: David Elwyn Evans (University of St Andrews), Edward Forman (University of Bristol), Elisabeth Gerwin (University of Lethbridge), Nigel Harkness (University of Newcastle upon Tyne), Tim Unwin (University of Bristol), David Williams (University of Sheffield), Jennifer Yee (University of Oxford)

Dates

Born 7 Nov 1838
Died 19 Aug 1889
Activity 1858-1889

Places

Born in France
Active in France

Activities

Primary

Novelist

Resources

Villiers de L'Isle-Adam's Works

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“Boxing instructor, cured madman, pretender to the Greek throne and suitor to a rich heiress”: it was thus that the veteran publisher Gustave de Malherbe described Villiers de l’Isle-Adam on the fortieth anniversary of his death (Goujon, 1987, 162). By his full name Jean-Marie-Mathias-Philippe-Auguste, comte de Villiers de l’Isle-Adam, he was the descendant of a family of Breton aristocrats from Saint-Brieuc who had fallen on hard times, and a man who “preferred the immaculate conception of his dreams to the stomach-turning satiety of tangible life” (Bloy, 1905, 306). Hailed by W. B. Yeats as an archetypal Symbolist, he penned dramas, novels, short stories, poetry, and journalistic pieces. From the earnest romanticism of the

Premières poésies

[Early Poems] (1859) and his…

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3075 words

Citation: Chalmers, Madeleine. "Philippe-Auguste Villiers de L'Isle-Adam". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 05 August 2020 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=4546, accessed 23 November 2024.]

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