Louis Énault


Louis Énault was a French journalist, novelist and translator. He sometimes used the pseudonym "Louis de Vernon".

Life

Born in Isigny-sur-Mer, he trained as a lawyer in Paris and then - thanks to his links with the Legitimists - was arrested after the French Revolution of 1848. After his release he travelled in northern Europe and the Mediterranean, visiting Liguria in 1850 and giving a long description of Genoa's historic city centre in his travel journal Brève vision hivernale d'un voyageur normand. On his return to France in 1851, he was made a doctor of letters at Caen University after writing a thesis on Aeschylus. He then worked as an arts and literary critic for several newspapers such as la Vie à la campagne, Le Nord, Le Constitutionnel, La Gazette, Le Figaro and L'Illustration.
Alternating between original work and translation, he collaborated with Gustave Doré, producing an illustrated 1876 work on the industrial revolution in London, widely admired for the realism of its over 170 woodcuts and for its text, comparing London's architecture with the neoclassical monuments Énault had visited in Valletta on Malta during his travels on French medieval crusader routes. His translations into French include Uncle Tom's Cabin and The Sorrows of Young Werther. He died in Paris. Celebrated in his time but now little known, Jules Romains cites him as an example of a writer who knew notoriety and even glory and whose name means nothing to the young generation.

Works

Arts and history