Background
He was born at Rennes, in Brittany, and educated at a Jesuit college there.
ambassador Diplomat historian journalist politician member of parliament in France poet
He was born at Rennes, in Brittany, and educated at a Jesuit college there.
He came to Paris in 1772, and wrote criticisms for the Mercure de France. He also composed a comic opera, Pomponin (1777). The Satire des satires (1778) and the Confession de Zulmé (1779) followed.
The Confession was claimed by several different authors and was very successful. Ginguené's defence of Niccola Piccinni against the partisans of Glück made him more widely known. He hailed the first symptoms of the French Revolution, and joined Giuseppe Cerutti, the author of the Mémoire pour le peuple français (1788), and others in producing the Feuille villageoise, a weekly paper addressed to the villages of France.
He also celebrated in an indifferent ode the opening of the states-general. He was imprisoned during the Reign of Terror and escaped with life only by the downfall of Maximilien Robespierre. In 1797, the Directory appointed him minister plenipotentiary to the king of Sardinia.
After seven months, Ginguené retired to his country house of St Prix, in the valley of Montmorency.
In his Lettres sur les confessions de J.-J. Rousseau (1791), he defended the life and principles of his author.
After his release he assisted, as director-general of the "commission exécutive de l'instruction publique", in reorganizing the system of public instruction, and he was an original member of the Institute of France. He was appointed a member of the tribunate, but Napoleon, finding that he was not sufficiently tractable, had him expelled at the first "purge", and Ginguené returned to his literary pursuits.