1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Féval, Paul Henri Corentin

FÉVAL, PAUL HENRI CORENTIN (1817–1887), French novelist and dramatist, was born on the 27th of September 1817, at Rennes in Brittany, and much of his best work deals with the history of his native province. He was educated for the bar, but after his first brief he went to Paris, where he gained a footing by the publication of his “Club des phoques” (1841) in the Revue de Paris. The Mystères de Londres (1844), in which an Irishman tries to avenge the wrongs of his countrymen by seeking the annihilation of England, was published under the ingenious pseudonym “Sir Francis Trolopp.” Others of his novels are: Le Fils du diable (1846); Les Compagnons du silence (1857); Le Bossu (1858); Le Poisson d’or (1863); Les Habits noirs (1863); Jean le diable (1868), and Les Compagnons du trésor (1872). Some of his novels were dramatized, Le Bossu (1863), in which he had M. Victorien Sardou for a collaborator, being especially successful in dramatic form. His chronicles of crime exercised an evil influence, eventually recognized by the author himself. In his later years he became an ardent Catholic, and occupied himself in revising his earlier works from his new standpoint and in writing religious pamphlets. Reverses of fortune and consequent overwork undermined his mental and bodily health, and he died of paralysis in the monastery of the Brothers of Saint John in Paris on the 8th of March 1887.

His son, Paul Féval (1860–  ), became well known as a novelist and dramatist. Among his works are Nouvelles (1890), Maria Laura (1891), and Chantepie (1896).