BARBEY D'AUREVILLY, JULES-AMDE

born Nov. 2, 1808, Saint-Sauveur-le-Vicomte, Fr. died April 23, 1889, Paris French novelist and influential critic; he was an arbiter, in his day, of social fashion and literary taste. A member of the minor nobility of Normandy, he remained throughout his life proudly Norman in spirit and style, a royalist opposed to democracy and materialism and an ardent but unorthodox Roman Catholic. After study at the Stanislas College in Paris (182729) and, in law, at Caen (182933), Barbey d'Aurevilly established himself in Paris in 1837 and began to earn a precarious living by writing for periodicals. Despite his evident poverty, he went to great lengths to establish himself as a dandy, and his sartorial splendours and magnificent attitudes became legendary. Barbey d'Aurevilly was appointed, in 1868, to alternate with Charles-Augustin Sainte-Beuve as literary critic for Le Constitutionnel, and on Sainte-Beuve's death in 1869 he became sole critic. Thenceforward his reputation grew, and he came to be known as le Conntable des Lettres (The Constable of Literature). Though he was often arbitrary, vehement, and intensely personal in his criticism, especially of mile Zola and the Naturalist school, many of his verdicts have stood the test of time; he recognized the attainments of Honor de Balzac, Stendhal, and Charles Baudelaire when they were far from being fully appreciated. His own novels are set in Normandy, and most of them are tales of terror in which morbid passions are acted out in bizarre crimes. Two of his best works are set against a background of the French Revolution: Le Chevalier des Touches (1864), dealing with the rebellion of the Chouans (bands of Norman outlaws) against the French Republic, and Un Prtre mari (1865; A Married Priest), dealing with the sufferings of a priest under the new regime. Les Diaboliques (1874; Weird Women), a collection of six short stories, is often considered his masterpiece.