Author: Arnault, Antoine Vincent
Biography:
ARNAULT, Antoine Vincent (1766-1834: BNG)
Born in Paris on 1 Jan. 1766 and educated at the College of Juilly, he had an immediate success with his first tragedy, Marius à Minturnes, composed under the Revolutionary regime and performed at the Comédie Française in 1791. Lucrèce (1792) consolidated his reputation. He fled Paris during the Terror in 1793 and was arrested as an emigré on his return at the end of the year; his reputation probably saved his life. About 1786 he married Marie-Jeanne Catherine Sophie de Guesnon de Bonneuil (1770-1866). Their eldest son Lucien-Emile also became a dramatist. Under Napoleon, Arnault was appointed in 1797 to help to reorganize the government of the Ionian islands, a task he executed with success, all the while continuing to write: from this period his best-known works were his Fables (1812-26) and Germanicus (1817), of which the translation here seems to have been the first of any of the works of Arnault to appear in English. (GM approved of the play but complained about the literalness of the translation: staying too close to the French text produced an effect that the reviewer found “harsh and abrupt.” Bernel is not known to have published anything else.) After his recall to Paris from exile in 1819 he was restored in 1829 to the membership of the Académie Française that had been stripped from him earlier; he went on to be appointed its Permanent Secretary. Other notable works were his biographical tribute to Napoleon in 3 vols. (1822), two editions of his collected works (1818-19, 1824), and his memoirs entitled Souvenirs d’un séxagénaire (1833). He died at Goderville on 16 Sept. 1834. (BNG; GM Sept. 1817, 249-50)
Other Names:
- A.-V. Arnault