FRERON, ELIE-CATHERINE. - French critical journalist, b. at Quimper on 18 (20) January 1718 (1719), d. at Paris on 10 March 1776. Having entered the Jesuits, he laid aside the habit in 1739.
He initially collaborated with P. F. Des Fontaines on his journal Observations sur quelques écrits modernes, then published on his own account *Lettres de M. me le contesse de*** (1745), in which he attacked the most prominent writers of the time. When the paper was suppressed, he resumed the controversy in Lettres sur quelques écrits de ce temps (1749), which won him the sympathies of the court. On 3 February 1754 he founded the Aînée littéraire, which continued until his death, a veritable “literary scourge,” in which he relentlessly castigated the impiety and subversiveness of the Encyclopedists, especially Voltaire, but also their literary merit. His opponents took revenge by obtaining, along with the suppression of the journal, his arrest. Caustic in spirit and endowed with every resource of polemic, he was neither impartial nor profound; he had to contend with adversaries too powerful, who, by their invectives, gave him perhaps more prominence than he deserved, but to the detriment of his reputation. His immense output is said to exceed 250 volumes.