BARBEY d'AUREVILLY, Jules. — French writer, b. at Saint-Sauveur-le-Vicomte in 1808, d. in Paris in 1889. A personal and effective novelist, he took a stand against naturalism, proclaiming his Catholic and legitimist sentiments; he produced works of unequal but interesting value. He did not shrink from narrating at times audacities and perversions that alienated the minds of readers, as in the novel Une vieille maîtresse (1851), and these constitute perhaps the most singular, but also the least sympathetic aspect of his work as a vigorous and bizarre writer. Barbey d'Aurevilly attempted to defend himself from criticism by maintaining that descriptions of vice aimed only to arouse its abhorrence.
The masterpiece of Barbey d'Aurevilly is considered the novel L'Ensorcelée (1854), but also noteworthy are Le chevalier Des Touches (1864), Un prêtre marié (1865), Les Diaboliques (1874), Une histoire sans nom (1883), Du Dandysme et de G. Brummel (1845). Among his essays: Goethe et Diderot (1880), Les Ridicules du temps (1883), Sensations d'art (1886), Mémoires historiques et littéraires (1893), Romanciers d'hier et d'avant-hier (1904), Poésie et poètes (1906), Littérature étrangère (1891), etc.