FÉVAL, PAUL. — French novelist and dramatist, born in Rennes on 27 September 1817, died in Paris on 8 March 1887.
His first novels, Le club des phoques; Mystères de Londres, etc., were followed, after a period of inactivity caused by his failure in the theater, by La fée des greues (1815), Le tueur des tigres (1854), Le poisson d'or (1863), L'hôtel Carnavalet (1877), etc. In 1863 he published his finest drama, Le bossu, adapted from the novel of the same name. In the final years of his life, under the lash of reverses of fortune and thanks to his wife’s religious devotion, he became a fervent Catholic; in addition to producing new works inspired by his return to the faith, he began revising his earlier works to make them irreproachable. Illness and death, however, prevented him from completing the task.