Germain-François Poullain de Saint-Foix

Germain-François Poullain de Saint-Foix (February 1698, Rennes - 25 August 1776) was a French writer and playwright.

Life

He served with the musketeers until he was 36, distinguishing himself at Guastalla in 1734. He then left the army and purchased a post as "maître des eaux et forêts" in Rennes. He published his first comedy, Pandore, in 1721 and from 1740 devoted himself entirely to writing, setting up in Paris and becoming a fashionable author there. He wrote 20 comedies in all.

In 1764 he was made historian of the ordre du Saint-Esprit. He was the brother of the jurist Auguste-Marie Poullain-Duparc.

Works

• Pandore (1721)
• Lettres d’une Turque à Paris (1730), in imitation of the Persian Letters by Montesquieu - reissued under the titles Lettres de Nedim Koggia (1732) and Lettres turques (1760)
• L’Oracle (1740)
• Deucalion et Pyrrha (1741)
• L’Île sauvage (1743)
• Le Sylphe (1743)
• Les Grâces (1744)
• Julie (1746)
• Egérie (1747)
• Les Veuves turques (1747)
• Les Métaphores (1748)
• La Colonie (1749)
• Le Rival supposé (1749)
• Les Hommes (1753)
• Essais historiques sur Paris, 5 vol. (London, 1754–1757)
• Le Financier (1761)
• Origine de la Maison de France (1761)
• Histoire de l’Ordre du Saint-Esprit (1767)
• Lettres au sujet de l’homme au masque de fer (1768)

Sources

• Jean de Viguerie, Histoire et dictionnaire du temps des Lumières, Robert Laffont, "Bouquins" collection, Paris, 1995 ISBN 2221048105