CROWNED BY THE FRENCH ACADEMY
Parisian novelist Emile Souvestre was born in 1806 in Morlaix, the son of a civil engineer. Later, Souvestre studied law, and worked in many professions, from journalist to schoolmaster, before entering upon a life of letters. During his lifetime, his novels were popular and well-received.
Souvestre is the author of a very early science fiction novel, The World as it Will Be (Le Monde Tel Qu'il Sera), first-published in 1846. An "Attic" Philosopher is the tale, in epistemological form, of one year in the life a young clerk who lives in an attic -- not a Greek philosopher. A kindly and thoughtful, if impulsive young man, the clerk's experiences will inspire and delight you from January 1 to December 31 -- and they provide an especially interesting portrait of life in Paris in the mid-Nineteenth century that contrasts with the acerbic, cynical vision of Balzac or the amoral world of Flaubert.
Author Biography
Emile Souvestre (1806 - 1854) was a French novelist who was a native of Morlaix, Finistere. He was the son of a civil engineer and was educated at the college of Pontivy, with the intention of following his father's career by entering the Polytechnic School. However, his father died in 1823 and he matriculated as a law student at Rennes but soon devoted himself to literature. He was by turns a bookseller's assistant, a private schoolmaster in Nantes, a journalist and a grammar school teacher in Brest and a teacher in Mulhouse. He settled in Paris in 1836. He began his literary career with a drama, played at the Theatre francais in 1828, the Siege de Missolonghi. This tragedy was a pronounced failure. In novel writing he did much better than for the stage, deliberately aiming at making the novel an engine of moral instruction. His first two novels L'Echelle de Femmes and Riche et Pauvre met with favorable receptions. His best work is to be found in the 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.
