Cherbuliez, the name of an influential family at Geneva, which has produced many eminent scholars and men of letters. Its founder was Abraham Cherbuliez, a prosperous bookseller, who left three sons—(1) ANDRÉ (1795-1874), professor first of Latin, next of Ancient Literature at the Geneva Academy, author of De Libro Job (1829), and an Essai sur la Satire Latine (1829).—(2) ANTOINE ELISÉE (1797-1869), an eminent publicist; professor of Law and Political Economy at Geneva; afterwards at Paris the redoubtable antagonist, in the pages of the journals, of Proudhon and the socialists; died professor at Zurich; author of De la Démocratie en Suisse (1843), Études sur les Causes de la Misère (1853), and Précis de la Science Économique (1862).—(3) JOEL (1806-70), who succeeded to his father's business, and became well known as editor of the Revue Critique (1833 et seq.), and an occasional contributor to the Revue des Deux Mondes. His book, Le Lendemain du dernier Jour d'un Condamné (1829), was a clever burlesque and more upon Victor Hugo's well-known tour-de-force on the question of capital punishment, while his Genève, ses Institutions, ses Mœurs, &c. (1867), was a solid contribution to the history of the city. Of the sisters, two made some reputation: the eldest, Madame TOURTE-CHERBULIEZ (1793-1863), wrote tales and novels, among them Annette Gervais, and Le Journal d'Amélie; and the youngest, ADRIENNE, born in 1804, translated into French the tales of Zschokke and H. von Kleist. See Rambert's Écrivains nationaux Suisses (vol. i. Geneva, 1874).
VICTOR CHERBULIEZ, son of André, was born at Geneva in 1829, and studied there, at Paris, Bonn, and Berlin, first mathematics, then philology and philosophy; after which he lived in Geneva as a teacher, until his call to Paris in 1864 to join the Revue des Deux Mondes. Since 1882 an Academician, he died 1st July 1899, near Melun. Cherbuliez began his literary career with books which were compounds between fiction and criticism. In the first of these, A propos d'un Cheval, Causeries Athéniennes (1860; 2d ed. under the title, Un Cheval de Phidias, 1864), beauty in art, and especially in the sculptures of Phidias, is discussed in a series of conversations by the attendants of a French marquise who is visiting Athens; Le Prince Vitale (1864) treats in a similar way the subject of Tasso's madness; Le Grand Œuvre (1867) contains, with many incongruous enough discussions of social and political questions, an account of the unfortunate attempt of an English baronet to grow a wife for himself. From these the author turned to work which really proved his powers. In 1863 he published Le Comte Kostia, a strong and striking novel, which at once found its author an audience. It was followed by a series of novels which, always clever and original, if sometimes mannered and over-inventive, have lifted Cherbuliez into the front rank of contemporary French writers of fiction. His style is brilliant and epigrammatic, his dialogue natural and lively; while he is readable from beginning to end, and his situations are not only full of interest for the moment, but are remembered long. Many of his earlier stories take the form of a narrative by the chief character, but those difficulties in developing a plot in such a method which have been too great for many novelists, M. Cherbuliez has surmounted with consummate art. His best novels, besides those named already, are: Le Roman d'une honnête Femme (1866), L'Aventure de Ladislav Bolski (1869), La Revanche de Joseph Noirel (1872), Méta Holdenis (1873), Miss Rovel (1875), Le Fiancé de Mlle. de Saint-Maur (1876), Samuel Brohl et Cte (1877), L'Idée de Jean Teterol (1878), La Ferme du Choquard (1883), and La Vocation du Comte Ghislain (1888). He published, besides several volumes of political studies on Germany and Spain, as well as Hommes et Choses du Temps présent (1883), a series of papers which appeared in the
Renne des Deux Mondes. He died in Paris, 2d July 1899. See Saintsbury, Essays on French Novelists (1891).