BARBEY  D'AUREVILLY, JULES AMEDEE (1808-1889),

French man of letters, was born at Saint-Sauveur-le-Vicomte (Manche) on the 2nd of November 18o8 . His most famous novels are Une Vieille Maitresse (1851), attacked at the time of its publication on the charge of immorality; L'Ensorcelee (1854), an episode of the royalist rising among the Norman peasants against the first republic; the Chevalier Destouches (1864); and a collection of extraordinary stories entitled Les Diaboliques (1874) . Barbey d'Aurevilly is an extreme example of- the eccentricities of which the Romanticists were capable, and to read him is to understand the discredit that fell upon the manner . He held extreme Catholic views and wrote on the most risque subjects; he gave himself aristocratic airs and hinted at a mysterious past, though his parentage was entirely bourgeois and his youth very hum-drum and innocent . In the 'fifties d'Aurevilly became literary critic of the Pays, and a number of his essays, contributed to this and other journals, were collected as Les Euvres et les hommes du XIXe siecle (1861–1865) . Other literary studies are Les Romanciers (1866) and Goethe et Diderot (188o) . He died in Paris on the 23rd of April 1889 . Paul Bourget describes him as a dreamer with an exquisite sense of vision, who sought and found in his work 'a refuge from the uncongenial world of every day . Jules Lemaitre, a less sympathetic critic, finds in the extraordinary crimes of his heroes and heroines, his reactionary views, his dandyism and snobbery, an exaggerated Byronism . See also Alcide Dusolier, Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly (1862), a collection of eulogies and interviews; Paul Bourget, Preface to d'Aurevilly's Memoranda (1883); Jules Lemaitre, Les Contemporains; Eugene Grele, Barbey d'Aurevilly, sa vie et son oeuvre (1902) ; Rene Doumic, in the Revue des deux mondes (Sept . 1902) .