Sue, MARIE-JOSEPH-EUGÈNE, a master of melodramatic fiction, was born at Paris, 10th December 1804. The son of an army surgeon, he himself served as such in Spain and at Navarino, and worked up his experiences into the Byronic and absurd novels, Kernock le Pirate, La Salamandre, &c., as well as the unhistorical Histoire de la Marine Française (5 vols. 1835-37) and Histoire de la Marine Militaire chez tous les Peuples (1841). In 1829 his father died leaving him a handsome fortune, which enabled him to give himself seriously to literature. His first hit was the too famous Mystères de Paris (10 vols. 1842), which first appeared in the columns of the Journal des Débats. Its successor, Le Juif Errant, which appeared in the Constitutionnel (10 vols. 1845), was no less successful. Later works were Martin, l'Enfant Trouvé (12 vols. 1846), Les Sept Péchés Capitaux (16 vols. 1847-49), and Les Mystères du Peuple (16 vols. 1849), the last condemned by the law-courts of Paris as immoral and seditious. Sue was elected deputy for Seine in 1850, and attached himself to the Extreme Left. The coup d'état of December 1851 drove him into exile. He lived at Annecy in Savoy, and there died 3d August 1859.
Sue was often grouped with his contemporary Dunas, but is far his inferior in breadth, humanity, and interest generally. But he possesses undeniably the power of holding a reader fast in his story, and if his novels are never re-read and soon forgotten, at least they are read once in a fever of curiosity. Unfortunately their author was nothing of an artist, so that they possess as little excellence in form as in substance. Indeed these novels are hardly to be taken seriously as works of art, yet they have the vitality that ever belongs to a group of strong situations, however improbable. As for the unhealthy thread that runs throughout, that is nowadays no disqualification far beyond the bounds of France.