Armand Durantin


Anne-Adrien-Armand Durantin, also called Armand de Villevert, was a 19th-century French playwright and novelist.

Biography

First a lawyer, Durantin turned to literature and collaborated with the France littéraire and the Echo français as well as with other magazines. He then began to write theatre plays but success remained modest until the day the Théâtre du Gymnase announced a comedy in four acts, without the author's name, entitled Heloise Paranquet. How Montigny, then director of the Gymnase, had mounted this play aroused public attention. The success the play obtained, thanks to the skilful handling of dramatic situations, had critics trying to find who the author was, a name that the Cabinet littéraire soon unveiled. Only later was it learned that Durantin had benefited the collaboration of Alexandre Dumas fils. Durantin also injected his legal expertise in this play, but when he tried to repeat the feat with Thérèse Humbert two years later, the public did not follow him.
Among his novels, the Carnet d'un libertin, whose hero succumbs to a terrible disease after having exhausted all the debauchery, has the particularity of featuring the "scientific monstrosities" of musée Dupuytren.
A Parisisan street in the Montmartre area, has been named after him since 1881.

Publications

;Theatre
;Novels and varia