Gustave Drouineau

Gustave Pierre Drouineau (22 February 1798 – 19 April 1878) was a 19th-century French novelist, poet and playwright.

Biography Coming from a family of doctors of La Rochelle, he moved to Paris to study law and live from poetry. In 1826 he obtained a great success with his romantic drama Rienzi which would tour Europe, experience numerous translations and may have been a source of inspiration to Richard Wagner for his opera Rienzi (1828). His plays were presented on the most important Parisian stages of his time including the Théâtre de la Porte-Saint-Martin, the Théâtre de l'Odéon, and the Théâtre de l'Ambigu-Comique.

His novel Ernest ou le travers du siècle published in 1829 by Timothée Dehay became a best-seller, inspiring even Balzac for his Illusions perdues (1837). The following novels did not experience the same success. After the death of his wife from consumption, he immersed himself in spirituality. In 1833, he founded a sect which he named neo-Christianity and stopped definitively writing in 1835. His family had then him interned at the hospice of Lafond hospice where he plunged into total oblivion and ended his life.

Works

1823: Épître à Casimir Delavigne, sur ses ouvrages 1824: Épître à quelques poètes panégyristes 1826: Trois nuits de Napoléon, 2 vol. 1826: Rienzi, tribun de Rome, tragedy in 5 acts 1828: L'Écrivain public, drama in 3 acts, in prose, with Merville 1828: L'Espion, drama in 5 acts, in prose, with Louis Marie Fontan and Léon Halévy 1829: Ernest, ou Le travers du siècle, 5 vol. 1829: Le Fou, drama in 3 acts, with Antony Béraud and Alexis Decomberousse 1830: Lettre à M. Cauchois-Lemaire 1830: Françoise de Rimini, drama in 5 acts, in verses 1830: Le Soleil de la liberté 1832: Le Manuscrit vert, 2 vol. 1833: Les Ombrages, contes spiritualistes 1834: L'Ironie 1834: Confessions poétiques 1834: Le livre de beauté 1834: Celeste, 2 vol. 1834: Résignée, 2 vol. 1834: Pensées du ciel et de la solitude de Pierre-Justin Maurice, foreword, 1876: Ernest Dutouquet. Œuvres posthumes, théâtre, poésie diverses, posthumous