Author: Luce de Lancival, Jean-Charles-Julien
Biography:
LUCE DE LANCIVAL, Jean-Charles-Julien (1764-1810: NBG)
As a foreign-language author he requires only a brief biography. He was born at St. Gobain in Picardy, France, in 1764, and sent to Paris to be educated for the priesthood at the Collège Louis le Grand, where he was especially successful at Latin verses. His first published poems were in Latin. He was appointed to teach rhetoric at Navarre (1786) but then brought back to Lescar in southwest France (1787). The Revolution gave him an opportunity to abandon the priesthood and try making his way as a man of letters. He taught at his old college and published many poems and several plays, the last of which, Hector, had a triumphant success when it was performed in Feb. 1809. Napoleon awarded the author a pension of 6000 francs and the Légion d’Honneur. In 1810 he was named professor of Latin poetry at the Sorbonne. Luce de Lancival did not live to enjoy these honours, however; he died at Paris on 17 Aug. 1810, apparently of venereal disease—on account of which he had already suffered the amputation of a leg in 1794. For the English translator of Hector in 1810, when it was newly celebrated and the author recently dead, see the entry for Edward Mangin in this bibliography. (NBG 32, cols. 137-9)
Other Names:
- J. Ch. J. Luce de Lancival