Nodier

Nodier, CHARLES, a considerable French writer, was born at Besançon, 29th April 1780 (Sainte-Beuve), in 1781 (Weiss), or even 1783 (Quérard), the son of a revolutionist lawyer. He lived a shifty life at Paris, Besançon, Dôle, Laibach, and last again at Paris, where he was appointed in 1823 to the librarianship of the Bibliothèque de l'Arsenal. As a child an ardent Jacobin, he became a royalist at the Restoration, was elected to the Academy in 1833, and died 27th January 1844. He was a devoted student of entomology, philology, and bibliography, but his importance in literature depends mainly upon the influence his personality exerted on the group of Romanticists of 1830. Most of his literary work is already forgotten, save his delightfully fresh and fantastic short stories, of which may here be named Smarra, Histoire du Roi de Bohême et de ses sept Châteaux, La Fée aux Miettes, Inès de las Sierras, La Légende de Sœur Béatrice, Franciscus Columna, and his volume of Fairy-tales. His Souvenirs de Jeunesse (1832) must not be taken too seriously. The Œuvres Complètes (12 vols. 1832-34) are far from complete. There are Lives by Wey (1844) and Mme. Ménessier-Nodier (1867). See also Méricée's admirable éloge.