Paul Meurice

Paul Meurice

Paul Meurice (5 February 1818 - 11 December 1905)[1] was a French novelist and playwright best known for his friendship with Victor Hugo.

Biography

Meurice was born and died in Paris. In 1836, aged eighteen, he was introduced to Hugo by his friend Auguste Vacquerie, and soon became a devoted follower. He had literary ambitions and embarked on a career as playwright.

In 1848, Hugo made him the editor-in-chief of a journal he had just founded, called L'Événement. (This resulted in Meurice's imprisonment in 1851, during Hugo's exile.) Their friendship was very deep: the poet was a witness at Meurice's marriage to Palmyre Granger, daughter of the painter Jean-Pierre Granger. During the twenty years of Hugo's exile, Meurice looked after the financial and literary interests of the proscribed writer.

He meanwhile continued his own literary career, publishing novels, some in collaboration with Alexandre Dumas, for whom he would also ghost-write. He adapted Notre-Dame de Paris, Les Misérables and Quatre-Vingt-Treize for the stage.

With Vacquerie, and Victor Hugo's son Charles, Meurice founded the journal Le Rappel in 1869. On Hugo's death in 1885, Meurice and Vacquerie were made executors of his estate. In this capacity, Meurice compiled some posthumous collections of Hugo's poems. He established the Maison de Victor Hugo in Paris in 1902.

Works

Plays written in collaboration
Novels
Correspondence

Bibliography

Notes and references

  1. ↑ Date of birth given by the Bibliothèque nationale de France, citing a birth certificate in the Archives de Paris. Date of death given by the magazine Je sais tout, December 1905, p. 711.
  2. ↑ See: Théâtre (études et copies). Hamlet, Falstaff, Paroles, d'après Shakespeare, 1864. Texte en ligne (French)
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 Bibliothèque Hugo - Jussieu Vitrine n° 9 repère 31, 104, 105