Jean-Baptiste Benoît Eyriès

Jean-Baptiste Benoît Eyriès (; 24 June 176713 June 1846) was a French geographer, author and translator, best remembered in the English speaking world for his translation of German ghost stories Fantasmagoriana, published anonymously in 1812, which inspired Mary Shelley and John William Polidori to write Frankenstein and The Vampyre respectively. He was one of the founding members of the Société de Géographie, a member of the Société Asiatique, Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, American Philosophical Society, and American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and was awarded the Legion of Honour. He had a mountain named after him near Yos Sudarso Bay in New Guinea, as well as a sandbank near French Island, Australia, and a street in Le Havre.

Biography Born in Marseille on 24 June 1767, the son of Jacques-Joseph Eyriès, a "" ('lieutenant of the king's frigates'), and Jeanne-Françoise Deluy (1748–1826). He moved to Le Havre in 1772 when his father was promoted to "" ('commander of the Navy'), and went to study at the College of Juilly. Eyriès began to travel to England, Germany, Sweden and Denmark to learn their languages and study botany and mineralogy, and through it grew to love geography and travel. Returning to Le Havre, he began working in the armaments trade, including commercial expeditions to various parts of the world, while taking care of a natural history museum there. In 1794 he went to Paris to free his father, who had been detained as a suspect in the new Republic, moving there the following year to devote himself to his studies, where he attended lectures by Antoine Laurent de Jussieu and Georges Cuvier, and started collecting old travel books. He was admitted to the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres in 1839, was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society in 1840 and a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1841, and was awarded the Legion of Honour in 1844.

Graville Priory in Le Havre, where Eyriès was buried in 1846.Eyriès suffered a stroke in 1844, rendering him incapable of further work, and died on 13 June 1846 at the house of his brother Alexandre Eyriès, the mayor of Graville near Le Havre, and was buried in the cemetery of Graville Priory, with an inscription on his tombstone after Edme François Jomard. He left a library of about 20,000 volumes collected throughout his life, which reflect his interest in rare and old works on travel and geography, and included almost everything written on Normandy, Le Havre and Provence, with rare maps from the German and Scandinavian countries, some of which are not even in the Bibliothèque nationale de France. Many of these books, and some of his manuscripts, remain as of 2006 in the municipal library of Le Havre, and a street "Rue Jean Baptiste Eyries" was named after him in the city. Eyriès was remembered by his contemporaries for his erudition, selfless dedication, prodigious memory, critical thinking and modesty, and Pierre Larousse wrote of him: "Many people still remember seeing a little old man in antiquated clothes, wearing a wide-brimmed hat and reading along the waterfront: that was Eyriès, who worked to fill his vast memory and his rich library at the same time."