Louis Gustave Vapereau

Background

Louis Gustave Vapereau was born at Orleans on the 4th of April 1819.

Education

He was educated at the Rcole Normale.

Career

He became a teacher of philosophy, and was entrusted by Victor Cousin with the preparation of his studies on the Pensees of Pascal. Under the empire his republican principles cost him his position, and Vapereau studied for the bar. He practised, however, little or not at all, and after 1870 he was appointed prefect of Cantal (1870) and of Tarn et Garonne (1871 -1873). From 1877 to 1888 he was inspector-general of public instruction. He was the author of some excellent editions of the classics, and of works on political and social questions, but he is famous for his valuable Diclionnaire universal des contemporains (1858; 6th ed. , 1893), brought up to date in 1895 by a supplementary volume. He also drew up a Dictionnaire universel des littérateurs (1876). At the time of his death at Norsang-sur-Orge in 1906, he had been for twenty-six years a regular contributor to L'Illustration, some of his notes written for this journal being collected in 1896 as L'Homme et la vie.

Achievements

• He was a French writer and lexicographer famous primarily for his dictionaries, the Dictionnaire universel des contemporains and the Dictionnaire universel des littérateurs.

Works

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• book

  • Dictionnaire Universel Des Contemporains: Contenant Toutes Les Personnes Notables De La France Et Des Pays Étrangers. I - Z, Volume 2... (French Edition)

    (This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. T...)

Views

Quotations: "Nothing is truer in a sense than a funeral oration: It tells precisely what the dead man should have been. "

"Women are always anxious to urge bachelors to matrimony; is it from charity, or revenge ?. "