ALEXANDRE

See also:

• ALEXANDRE BELJAME (1842-1906)

BELJAME (1842-1906)  , French writer, was born at Villiers-le-Bel, Seine-et-Oise, on the 26th of November 1842 . He spent part of his childhood in England and was a frequent visitor in London . His lectures on English literature at the Sorbonne, where a chair was created expressly for him, did much to promote the study of English in France . In 1905–1906 he was Clark lecturer on English literature at Trinity College, Cambridge . He died at Domont (Seine-et-Oise) on the 19th of September 1906 . His best known book was a masterly study of the conditions of literary life in England in the 18th century illustrated by the lives of Dryden, Addison and Pope . This book, Le Public et les hommes de lettres en Angleterre au X VIII' siecle (1881), was crowned by the French Academy on the appearance of the second edition in 1897 . He was a good Shakespearian scholar, and his editions of Macbeth, Othello and Julius Caesar also received an academic prize in 1902 .