Abel-François Villemain

Abel-François Villemain (; 9 June 17908 May 1870) was a French politician and writer.

Biography Villemain was born in Paris and educated at the Lycée Louis-le-Grand. He became assistant master at the Lycée Charlemagne, and subsequently at the École Normale. In 1812 he gained a prize from the academy with an essay on Michel de Montaigne. Under the restoration he was appointed, first, assistant professor of modern history, and then professor of French eloquence at the Sorbonne. Here he delivered a series of literary lectures which had an extraordinary effect on his younger contemporaries.

Villemain worked during the transition to the Romantic movement, and his lectures influenced the generation of writers that emerged around 1830. He appreciated English, German, Italian, and Spanish poetry while continuing to support classical Greek, Roman, and French literature. and two years later he was elected to the academy. Villemain was appointed by the restoration government Chef de l'imprimerie et de la librairie, a post involving a kind of irregular censorship of the press, and afterwards to the office of master of requests. Before the July Revolution he had been deprived of his office for his liberal tendencies, and was elected deputy for Évreux in July 1830. Under Louis-Philippe he was made a Peer of France in 1832. He was a member of the council of public instruction, and was twice minister of that department, and he also became secretary of the academy. During the whole of the July Monarchy he was one of the chief dispensers of literary patronage in France, but in his later years his reputation declined. He died in Paris.

Among notices on Villemain may be cited that of Louis de Loménie (1841), E. Mirecourt (1858), J.L. Dubut (1875). See also Sainte-Beuve, Portraits (1841, vol. iii), and Causeries du lundi (vol. xi, "Notes et pensées").