SMILE

SOUVESTRE (1806-1854)  , French novelist, was born on the 15th of April 1806 . He was the son of a civil engineer, a native of Morlaix . He was by turns a bookseller's assistant, a private schoolmaster, a journalist, and master at the grammar schools of Brest and of Miilhausen . He settled in Paris in 1836, where he was made (1848) professor in a school for the instruction of civil servants . He began his literary career with a drama, played at the Theatre francais in 1828, the Siege de Missolonghi . In novel writing he did much better than for the stage, although he deliberately aimed at making the novel an engine of moral instruction . His best work is undoubtedly to be found in the charming Derniers Bretons (4 vols., 1835-1837) and Foyer breton (1844), where the folk-lore and natural features of his native province are worked up into story form, and in Un Philosophe sous les toils, which received in 1851 a well deserved academic prize . He also wrote a number of other works—novels, dramas, essays and miscellanies . He died in Paris on the 5th of July 1854 .