KOCK, CHARLES-PAUL DE

born May 21, 1793, Passy, Fr. died April 27, 1871, Paris prolific French author whose discreetly pornographic novels about Parisian life were, in his day, popular reading throughout Europe. The son of a refugee Dutch banker who was guillotined during the Revolution, Kock became a bank clerk in 1808 but abandoned all thoughts of a business career that same year after publishing, at his own expense, his first book, L'Enfant de ma femme. His collected works were published between 1835 and 1844. Among his most successful books were Georgette (1820), Gustave, ou le mauvais sujet (1821), La Femme, le mari et l'amant (1829), and Moeurs parisiennes (1837). Kock's novels were composed hurriedly, and his style was careless, but his combination of vigour, coarseness, sense of plot, keen observation, sentimentality, brisk narrative, and descriptive power made his books widely appealing.