ÉMILE AUGIER

Born, Valence, France, 1820
Died, Croissy-sur-Seine, 1889
The following biography was originally published in The Outlines of Literature: English and American. Truman J. Backus. New York: Sheldon and Company, 1897. pp. 90-102.

The following works of French dramatist Émile Augier (1820-1889) have been adapted to the English stage: Ciguë (1844), L'Aventurière (1848), Gabrielle (1849), Le Gendre de M. Poirier (1855), Les Fourchambault (1878), and Le Mariage d'Olympe (1897). His Lionnes Pauvres (1858) was adapted under the title of A False Step, but was refused a licence by the English censor (1878). "M. Augier," says Brander Matthews, "inherits the best traditions of French comedy. He is a true child of Beaumarchais, a true grandchild of Molière. He has the Gallic thrust of the one, and something of the broad utterance of the other and greater" (French Dramatists of the Nineteenth Century). "M. Augier," says Dutton Cook, "is nothing if not didactic; he is witty and eloquent; the stage is to him something of a pulpit, and he finds in Paris attentive and admiring audiences of his moral essays by reason of the striking illustrations that accompany them" (Nights at the Play).

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