QUINET, EDGAR. - French historian and politician, born in Bourg-en-Bresse on 17 February 1803, died in Paris on 27 March 1875. In 1839 he was appointed to teach foreign literatures at the Academy of Lyon, and in 1841 moved to the chair of Romance literatures at the Collège de France. Suspended in 1846 by Guizot for his violent positions against the Jesuits and Ultramontanism (Catholic Church), he participated in the February Revolution and was deputy to the Constituent and Legislative Assemblies; exiled from 1852 in Brussels and French Switzerland, he returned to Paris after the fall of Napoleon III and again sat on the far left of the Legislative Assembly.
From childhood he had read with enthusiasm the masterpieces of Italian and English literature, especially those of the Renaissance. He translated Herder’s Philosophy of History, traveled to England, Germany, Greece, and Italy, developing a Romantic taste that found free expression in the mystery *Ahasverus* (on the legend of the Wandering Jew) and in books and articles offering acute observations on the future of Europe. Removed from teaching, he systematically expressed his ideas on Italian history in the two volumes of *Révolutions d’Italie* (1848–52), which exerted notable influence on subsequent works by Giuseppe Ferrari (1858) and Francesco De Sanctis (1872). Among his other works from exile were *Histoire de mes idées*; *Philosophie de l’histoire de France* (1858); *La Révolution* (1863), and he continued to devote some attention to our country in *France et Italie* and *La Question Romaine devant l’histoire* (1867).
Quinet’s works that most reflect his violent opposition to the Catholic Church were placed on the Index: *Ahasverus* (29 Jan. 1835); *Le génie des religions* (8 Aug. 1844); *Allemagne et Italie* (15 Apr. 1848); *La Révolution* (17 Dec. 1866).
His wife posthumously published his complete works in thirty volumes (Paris 1877–82) and wrote a two-part biography, *Avant* and *Depuis l’exil* (ibid. 1888–89).
