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: Edward Forman (University of Bristol), 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

“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 …

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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://staging.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=4546, accessed 22 November 2024.]

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