Charles-Antoine-Guillaume Pigault de l'Espinoy, better known as Pigault-Lebrun, (8 April 1753 – 24 July 1835) was a French novelist, playwright, and Epicurean. Victor Hugo references Pigault-Lebrun in chapter I part 8 of Les Misérables, describing a senator as "probably a product of Pigault-le Brun."

Life

He was born at

Calais Calais ( , , traditionally , ) is a port city in the Pas-de-Calais department, of which it is a subprefecture. Although Calais is by far the largest city in Pas-de-Calais, the department's prefecture is its third-largest city of Arras. Th ...

; he is said to have traced his pedigree on the mother's side to

Eustache de Saint Pierre Eustache de Saint Pierre, by Jean-Simon Berthélemy Eustache de Saint Pierre is the best-known figure of the group of six known as The Burghers of Calais, the first to volunteer and surrender, wearing "a shirt and a rope around his neck" to the ...

. His youth was stormy. He twice carried off young ladies of some position, and was in consequence twice imprisoned by '' lettre de cachet''. The first, a Miss Crawford, the daughter of an English merchant whose office Pigault had entered, died almost immediately after her elopement; the second, Mlle de Salens, he married. He became a soldier in the Queen's Guards, then a very unsuccessful actor, and a teacher of French. At the breaking out of the great war he re-enlisted and fought at

Valmy Valmy () is a Communes of France, commune in the Marne (department), Marne Departments of France, department in north-eastern France. Geography The town stands on the west flank of the Forest of Argonne, Argonne massif, midway between Verdun-sur ...

. He wrote more than twenty plays, and a large number of novels, the first of which appeared in 1787. In his old age he took to graver work, and executed an abridgment of French history in eight volumes, besides some other work. His ''Œuvres complètes'' were published in twenty volumes between 1822 and 1824, but much of his work is subsequent to this collection. The style of Pigault's novels is lively and rich, and the morality is very far from severe. As almost the father of a kind of literature which later developed enormously, Pigault-Lebrun deserves a certain place in literary history. Among the most celebrated of his novels may be mentioned ''L'Enfant du Carnaval'' (1792) and ''Angelique et Jeanneton de la place Maubert'' (1799). His ''Citateur'' (2 vols., 1803), a collection of quotations against Christianity, was forbidden and yet several times reprinted.

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* * 1753 births 1835 deaths People from Calais 18th-century French novelists 19th-century French novelists People imprisoned by lettre de cachet French male novelists 19th-century French male writers 18th-century French male writers {{France-playwright-stub