RESTIF, NICOLAS EDME (17341806)

This article appears in Volume V23, Page 200 of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

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RESTIF, NICOLAS EDME (17341806) , called RESTIF DE LA BRETONNE, French novelist, son of a farmer, was born at Sacy (

Yonne

YONNE

) on the 23rd of October 1734. He was educated by the Jansenists at Bicetre, and on the expulsion of the Jansenists was received by one of his

brothers

BROTHERS, RICHARD (1757-1824)

, who was a cure. Owing to a scandal in which he was involved, he was apprenticed to a printer at Auxerre, and, having served his time, went to Paris. Here he worked as a journeyman printer, and in 176o he married Anne or Agnes Lebegue, a relation of his former master at Auxerre. It was not until five or six years after his

marriage

MARRIAGE

that Restif appeared as an author, and from that time to his death, on the 2nd of February 18o6, he produced a bewildering multitude of books, amounting to something like two hundred volumes, many of them printed with his own hand, on almost every conceivable variety of subject. Restif suffered at one time or another the extremes of poverty and was acquainted with every kind of intrigue. He drew on the episodes of his own life for his books, which, in spite of their faded sentiment, contain truthful pictures of French society on the eve of the Revolution. The most noteworthy of his works are Le Pied de Fanchette, a novel (1769); Le Pornographe (1769), a plan for regulating prostitution which is said to have been actually carried out by the Emperor Joseph II., while not a few detached hints have been adopted by continental nations; Le Paysan perverti (1775), a novel with a moral purpose, though sufficiently horrible in detail; La Vie de mon pere (1779); Les Contemporaines (42 vols., 17801785), a vast collection of short stories; Ingenue Saxancour, also a novel (1785); and, lastly, the extraordinary autobiography of Monsieur Nicolas (16 vols., 17941797; the last two are practically a

separate

SEPARATE

and much less interesting

work

WORK

), in which at the age of sixty he has set down his remembrances, his notions on ethical and social points, his hatreds, and above all his numerous loves, real and fancied. The

original

ORIGINAL

editions of these, and indeed of all his books, have

long

LONG, GEORGE (1800-1879)
LONG, JOHN DAVIS (1838– )

been bibliographical curiosities owing to their rarity, the beautiful and curious illustrations which many of them contain, and the quaint typographic

system

SYSTEM

in which most are composed. In 1795 he received a gratuity of 2000 francs from the government, and just before his death

Napoleon

NAPOLEON

gave him a place in the ministry of police, which he did not live to take up.
Restif de la Bretonne undoubtedly holds a remarkable place in French literature. He was inordinately vain, of extremely relaxed morals, and perhaps not entirely sane. His books were written with haste, and their

licence

LICENCE (through the French from Lat. licentia, licere, to be lawful)

of subject and language renders them quite unfit for general perusal.
The works of C. Monselet, Retif de la Bretonne (1853), and P. Lacroix, Bibliographie et iconographie (1875), J. Assezat's selection from the Contemporaines, with excellent introductions (3vols.,1875), and the valuable reprint of Monsieur Nicolas (14 vols., 1883-1884), will be sufficient to enable even curious readers to form a judgment of him. His life, written by his contemporary Cubieres-Palmezeaux, was republished in 1875. See also Eugen Duhren, Retif de la Bretonne, der Mensch, der Schriftsteller, der Ref ormator (Berlin, 1906), and a bibliography, Retif-Bibliothek (Berlin, 1906), by the same author.

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