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Claude Prosper Jolyot de Crébillon (February 14, 1707 - April 12, 1777), was a French novelist.
Born at Paris, he was the son of the poet Prosper Jolyot de Crébillon. He lived there most of his life, but the publication of L'Ecumoire, ou Tanzal et Needarn, histoire japonaise (1734), which contained veiled attacks on the Papal bull Unigenitus, the cardinal de Rohan and the duchesse du Maine brought Crébillon into disgrace. He was first imprisoned and afterwards forced into exile for five years at Sens and elsewhere. With Alexis Piron and Charles Collé he founded a society that met regularly to dine at the famous "Caveau", where story-telling was the main pastime.
From 1759 onwards he was to be found at the Wednesday dinners of the Pelletier, at which David Garrick, Laurence Sterne and John Wilkes were sometimes guests. In 1748, he married an English lady of noble family, Lady Henrietta Maria Stafford, who had been his mistress from 1744. Their marriage is said to have been a happy one; and there could be no greater contrast thar that between Crébillon's private life and the tone of his novels, the immorality of which lent irony to the author's tenure of the office of censor, bestowed on him in 1759 through the favor of Madame de Pompadour.
The most famous of his numerous novels are: Les Amours de Ziokinizul, roi des Kofirans (1740), in which Zokinizul and Kofirans may be translated Louis XIV and the French respectively; and Le Sopha, conte moral (1740), where the moral is supplied in the title only. This last novel is given by some authorities as the reason for his imprisonment.
His Œuvres were collected and printed in 1772. See a notice of Crébillon prefixed to Octave Uzanne's edition of his Contes dialogues it the series of Conteurs du XVIII' siècle. Crébillon's novels might be pronounced immoral to the last degree if it were not that two writers slightly later in date surpassed even his achievements in this particular. André Robert de Nerciat produced under a false name a number of licentious tales, and was followed by Donatien, marquis de Sade.
Reference
- This entry incorporates public domain text originally from the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica.