AUGIER, EMILE. - Dramatic author, b. at Valenza in 1820, d. in 1889. Continuing PONSARD, he in turn reacted against Romanticism, bringing to triumph in French theatre what was called the "school of common sense." He was the playwright of the bourgeois class. In his own way he defended the principle of the legitimate family.
Around his masterpiece, *Le gendre de M. Poirier* (1855), are grouped his "family comedies," which are: *Un beau mariage* (1859), *Les lionnes pauvres* (1858), *Le mariage d’Olympe* (1855), *L’aventurière* (1848), *Gabrielle* (1849), *Maître Guérin* (1864). To these may be added *Madame Castellet* (1876), in which divorce is justified.
He expressed his political ideas in the comedies: *Les frontes* (1861) and *Le fils de Giboyer* (1862), defaming Catholic journalism and "religious royalism." Another comedy, *Lions et renards* (1869), is a slanderous satire of the Jesuits.
A bourgeois Molière, he was a skilled and effective builder of stage scenes, though old theatrical conventions still appear in his work. His satire is often coarse and exaggerated. His secular and bourgeois "morality" earned him praise and honours. Catholic polemicists vigorously opposed him.