Author: Gresset, Jean Baptiste
Biography:
GRESSET, Jean Baptiste Louis (1709-77: EB)
A foreign-language author, Gresset was born in Amiens, France, on 29 Aug. 1709 and educated by the Jesuits. He entered the Jesuit order in 1726 but, after attaining literary fame, he left—or was expelled—in 1735. Ver-Vert, the comic and irreverent narrative of a parrot in a convent, had made Gresset instantly famous when it was published in about 1734 and it remains the work by which he is known today. It was first translated into English by John Gilbert Cooper in 1759 and another translation was published in Dublin as Green-Green in 1762. Gresset wrote other works, including three plays and some lively accounts of life in a Jesuit college. He was admitted to the Académie Française in 1748. In 1751 he married a wealthy woman in Amiens; her name is not known and there do not seem to have been any children. Gresset renounced his lighter works and destroyed a fifth unpublished canto of Ver-Vert before his death on 16 June 1777. The translation of Ver-Vert included in this bibliography is attributed to Alexander Geddes (q.v.) in the Annual Review for 1803 (1804). (EB; Wikipedia 15 Nov. 2024; [Alexander Geddes], “Address to the Reader,” Ver-Vert [1793]) SR
Other Names:
- J. B. Gresset