SUE, EUGENE [JosEPH MARIE] (18041857)

This article appears in Volume V26, Page 20 of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

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SUE, EUGENE [JosEPH MARIE] (18041857) , French novelist, was born in Paris on the 20th of January 1804. He was the son of a distinguished surgeon in

Napoleon

NAPOLEON

's army, and is said to have had the empress Josephine for godmother. Sue himself acted as surgeon both in the Spanish campaign undertaken by France in 1823 and at the battle of Navarino (1828). In 1829 his father's death put him in possession of a considerable fortune, and he settled in Paris. His naval experiences supplied much of the materials of his first novels, Kernock le pirate (1830), Atar-

Gull

(1831), La Salamandre (2 vols., 1832), La Coucaratcha (4 vols., 18321834), and others, which were composed at the height of the romantic

movement

MOVEMENT

of 1830. In the quasi-historical style he wrote

Jean

JEAN

Cavalier, ou Les Fanatiques des Cevennes (4 vols., 1840) and Latreaumont (2 vols., 1837). He was strongly affected by the
Socialist ideas of the day, and these prompted his most famous works: Les Mysteres de Paris (10 vols., 18421843) and Le Juif errant (ro vols., 18441845), which were among the most popular specimens of the roman-feuilleton. He followed these up with some singular and not very edifying books: Les Sept peates capitaux (16 vols., 18471849), which contained stories to illustrate each sin, Les Mysteres du peuple (18491856), which was suppressed by the censor in 1857, and several others, all on a very large scale, though the number of volumes gives an exaggerated

idea

IDEA (Gr. Ibia, connected with i&eiv, to see; cf. Lat. species from specere, to look at)

of their length. Some of his books, among them the Juif errant and the Mysteres de Paris, were dramatized by himself, usually in collaboration with others. His period of greatest success and popularity coincided with that of

Alexandre

ALEXANDRE, NOEL (NATALIS ALEXANDER) (1639-1724)

Dumas, with whom some writers have put him on an equality. Sue has neither Dumas's wide range of subject, nor, above all, his faculty of conducting the story by means of lively dialogue; he has, however, a command of terror which Dumas seldom or never attained. From the literary point of view his style is bad, and his construction prolix. After the revolution of 1848 he sat for Paris (the Seine) in the Assembly from

April

APRIL

1850, and was exiled in consequence of his protest against the coup d'etat of the 2nd of December 1851. This

exile

EXILE (Lat. exsilium or exilium, from exsul or exul, which is derived from ex, out of, and the root sal, to go, seen in salire, to leap,
consul
- CONSUL
- CONSUL (in Gr. generally ihraros,ashortened form of errpavgybs 8hraeos, i.e. praetor maximus)
, &c.; the connexion with solum, soil, country is now generally considered wrong)

stimulated his literary production, but the works of his last days are on the whole much inferior to those of his middle period. Sue died at

Annecy

ANNECY

(Savoy) on the 3rd of August 1857.

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