François Edouard Joachim Coppée

Background

François Coppée was born January 26, 1842, in Paris, into a family of modest means.

Education

He attended Lycée Saint-Louis.

Career

Coppée served as a clerk in the Ministry of War and was successful in 1869 with the play Le Passant. From 1871 to 1885 he was the librarian of the Comédie-Franƈaise, and during that time he published his best-known and most characteristic collection of verse, Les Humbles (1872). In 1884 he was elected to the Académie Franƈaise. In 1898, after a serious illness, he was reconverted to Roman Catholicism; that same year he published La Bonne Souffrance, a novel arising from this experience.

At the time of the Dreyfus case he was set up by his friends, against Émile Zola, as the representative of "good literature. "Coppée's plays and his poetry lack vigor, and his sentimentality is often excessive. After his death, May 23, 1908, his reputation diminished rapidly. Zola, however, praised him at one time for having raised the banner of naturalism in poetry.

Achievements

• He was an outstanding French poet and novelist.

Works

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  • Contes de Noël (French Edition)

    (Des contes de Noël signés par de grands auteurs du 19ème ...)

  • Ten Tales

    (Translated by WALTER LEARNED with an introduction by BRAN...)

  • François Coppée ; ses oeuvres - 31 titres (French Edition)

    (31 titres de François Coppée (1842/1908) Poésies Le Rel...)

  • La patrie française (French Edition)
  • Poésies

Politics

Coppée’s reputation has been diminished because of his involvement in nationalist and racialist politics. His return to religion seemed to intensify his patriotic sentiments. He was active on behalf of the prosecution against the French army officer Alfred Dreyfus, whose trial on a charge of treason divided France. Coppée later helped to found the anti-Semitic Ligue de la Patrie Française (French Fatherland League).