Émile Augier
Guillaume Victor Émile Augier (French pronunciation: [ɡijom viktɔʁ emil oʒje]; 17 September 1820 – 25 October 1889) was a French dramatist. He was the thirteenth member to occupy seat 1 of the Académie française on 31 March 1857.
Also recorded as Emile Augier
Émile Augier
![Répétition du prologue en vers La Femme de Diomède (Théophile Gautier) et de la pièce Le Joueur de flûte (Émile Augier) par les auteurs et comédiens, avant leur représentation durant des fêtes à l'antique chez le prince Jérôme Napoléon [1].](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/7e/La_maison_pomp%C3%A9ienne_de_Gustave_Boulanger.jpg/1130px-La_maison_pomp%C3%A9ienne_de_Gustave_Boulanger.jpg)
Gustave Boulanger · Public domain
- Full name
- Guillaume Victor Émile Augier.
- Born
- 1820. · Valence.
- Died
- 1889. · Villa Augier.
- Nationality
- France.
- Occupation
- playwright, poet, writer, dramaturge, librarian, politician and librettist.
- Education
- Lycée Henri-IV.
- Known for
- La ciguë.
- Honours
- Grand Officer of the Legion of Honour, Montyon Prize and Commander of the Legion of Honour.
- Languages
- French.
VALÉORINE Encyclopedia
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Documentary summary
Guillaume Victor Émile Augier (French pronunciation: [ɡijom viktɔʁ emil oʒje]; 17 September 1820 – 25 October 1889) was a French dramatist. He was the thirteenth member to occupy seat 1 of the Académie française on 31 March 1857.
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Authority files
wikidata · Q256991 · wikipedia · Émile Augier
In this article
Biography
Biography
Émile Augier studied at Lycée Henri-IV. The recorded working language is French. Positions recorded include Second Empire senator and seat 1 of the Académie française. Works named in the authority record are La ciguë. Distinctions recorded are Grand Officer of the Legion of Honour, Montyon Prize and Commander of the Legion of Honour.
Augier was born at Valence, Drôme, the grandson of Pigault Lebrun, and belonged to the well-to-do bourgeoisie in spirit as well as by birth. After a good education and legal training, he wrote a play in two acts and in verse, La Ciguë (1844), which was refused at the Théâtre Français, but produced with as considerable success at the Odéon. This settled his career. From then on, at fairly regular intervals, either alone or in collaboration with other writers—Jules Sandeau, Eugène Marin Labiche, Édouard Foussier—he produced plays such as Le Fils de Giboyer (1862)—which was regarded as an attack on the clerical party in France, and was surely brought out by the direct intervention of the emperor. His last comedy, Les Fourchambault, belongs to the year 1879. After that date he wrote no more, restrained by the fear of producing inferior work. He died at his home at Croissy-sur-Seine.
Career
Career
Augier described his own life as "without incident". L'Aventurière (1848), the first of his important works, already shows a deviation from romantic ideals; and in the Mariage d'Olympe (1855), the courtesan is shown as she is, not glorified as in Dumas's Dame aux Camélias. In Gabrielle (1849), the husband, not the lover, is the sympathetic character. Augier provided the libretto for the first opera composed by Charles Gounod, Sapho (1851). In this version of the story a courtesan Glycère is the perfidious villainess, and the self-sacrificing title character is wholly heterosexual, not a "sapphist". In the Lionnes pauvres (1858) the wife who sells her favours comes under the lash. Greed of gold, social moralization, ultramontanism, and lust of power are satirized in several of his works. These include Les Effrontés (1861), Le Fils de Giboyer (1862), La Contagion (1866, announced under the title of Le Baron d'Estrigaud)). Lions et renards (1869)—which, with Le Gendre de Monsieur Poirier (1854), was written in collaboration with Jules Sandeau, and has been considered the high-water mark of Augier's art. In Philiberte (1853), he produced a graceful and delicate drawing-room comedy. In Jean de Thommeray, acted in 1873 after the Great Divergence of 1870, the regenerating note of patriotism after the Franco-Prussian war rings high and clear. His last two dramas, Madame Caverlet (1876) and Les Fourchambault (1879), are problem plays. In these, he was a moralist in the same sense in which the term can be applied to Molière and the great dramatists. His works depend not on elaborate plot but on characters built from real people. Augier's first drama, La Ciguë, belongs to a time (1844) when romantic drama was on the wane; his almost elusively domestic range of subject matter scarcely appears in the form of pure poetry.
Life and career
Dated record
Life and career
Explore 1820–1889
The full dated record · 8 entries
1820
Émile Augier was born in 1820 at Valence.
1858
Les lionnes pauvres piece en cinq actes en prose par Emile Augier et Edouard Foussier (1858) is digitised and catalogued by Internet Archive.
1858
Les lionnes pauvres piece en cinq actes en prose par Emile Augier et Edouard Foussier digitised by Internet Archive.
1866
La contagion comedie en cinq actes, en prose par Emile Augier (1866) is digitised and catalogued by Internet Archive.
1866
La contagion comedie en cinq actes, en prose par Emile Augier digitised by Internet Archive.
1883
Théatre complet de Emile Augier... (1883) is digitised and catalogued by Internet Archive.
1883
Théatre complet de Emile Augier... digitised by Internet Archive.
1889
Émile Augier died in 1889 at Villa Augier.
Places
Named by the record
Places
Only places the record itself states, plotted where the house gazetteer settles their coordinates. Nothing is inferred from a name or a nationality.
Valence.
Birth place
Villa Augier.
Death place
Primary material
Documents and archives
reference work
- Wikidata, structured authority record Q256991: Émile Augier
Reputable secondary · Wikimedia Foundation
- “Émile Augier”, English Wikipedia, consulted as further reading
Reputable secondary · Wikipedia
scholarly publication
- Hanan Hashem, Émile Augier, Alexandre Dumas fils, Victorien Sardou. Dramaturgie du savoir-vivre sous le Second Empire, Studi Francesi, 2016
Scholarly · Crossref registry · 2016
Citations
References
Each reference names the institution holding it, so a reader may go to the document itself.
scholarly publication
Hanan Hashem, Émile Augier, Alexandre Dumas fils, Victorien Sardou. Dramaturgie du savoir-vivre sous le Second Empire, Studi Francesi, 2016Crossref registry
Verifiedreference work
Wikidata, structured authority record Q256991: Émile AugierWikimedia Foundation
Partially resolvedreference work
Partially resolved
The Encyclopedia exists whether or not anything is for sale. Corrections are recorded rather than overwritten, and every version of this record is kept. Published 14 August 2026.
Elsewhere in Books
38,661 published records in this field, each with its sources named.
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