Édouard Pailleron

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Édouard Pailleron

Édouard Jules Henri Pailleron (September 7, 1834 - April 20, 1899) was a French poet and dramatist.

Born in Paris, he was educated for the bar, but after pleading a single case he entered the first dragoon regiment and served for two years. With the artist JA Beaucé, he travelled for some time in North Africa, and soon after his return to Paris in 1860 he produced a volume of satires, Les Parasites, and a one-act piece, Le Parasite, which was represented at the Odéon. He married the daughter of François Buloz in 1862, thus obtaining a share in the proprietorship of the Revue des deux mondes.

In 1869, he produced the Gymnase theatre's Les Faux ménages, a four act comedy depending for its interest on the pathetic devotion of the Magdalene of the story. L'Étincelle (1879), a brilliant one-act comedy, secured another success, and in 1881 with Le Monde où l'on s'amuse Pailleron produced one of the most strikingly successful pieces of the period. The play ridiculed contemporary academic society, and was filled with transparent allusions to well-known people. None of his subsequent efforts achieved so great a success. Pailleron was elected to the Académie française in 1882.

In France, his name became sadly famous again in the seventies because it was given to a French school in Paris which was destroyed by a fire on February 6, 1973, killing 21 children.

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This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain. The aricle is available here: [1]