Born: 27 April 1853

Died: 4 August 1914

Nationality: French

Movements: Impressionist

Genres: Criticism, essays, plays, short stories

His Works in Translation:

Criticism:

Literary Impressions (tr. A.W. Evans) (London: Daniel O’Connor, 1921)

Jean Jacques Rousseau (tr. Jeanne Mairet) (New York: McClure Company, 1907)

Three essays on criticism in A Modern Book of Criticism (ed. Ludwig Lewisohn) (New York: Boni and Liveright, 1919)

Review of a play by Eugène Brieux in The Living Age, Volume 212.

Fiction & Plays:

The Pardon (tr. Barrett H. Clark) in Three Modern Plays from the French (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1914)

Prince Hermann Regent (tr. Belle M. Sherman) (New York: Cassell Publishing Company, 1893)

Serenus and Other Stories of the Past and Present (tr. A.W. Evans) (London: Elkin Matthews & Marrot, 1920)

Illustrated Editions:

Dix Contes de Jules Lemaître (H. Lecène et H. Oudin, 1890) (French) (via Google Books)

Biographical Notices:

Brief bio and critical appraisal in “Literary Paris” by Theodore Child (Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, August 1892, Vol. LXXXV, No. DVII)

M. Jules Lemaître, born in 1853, left the École Normale in 1875 with a high literary degree and was appointed Professor of Rhetoric at Havre, where he remained five years. Thence he passed to Algiers, and in 1882 to Besançon. In 1883 he was received Docteur es Lettres at the Sorbonne, and appointed professor at the faculty of Genoble. Meanwhile, between 1880 and 1883 M. Jules Lemaître had published two volumes of verse, in which he showed himself an able and delicate artist in the Parnassian manner. Finally literature triumphed over pedagogy. In 1884, M. Jules Lemaître went to Paris, and became a regular contributor to La Revue Bleue, in which he has occasionally published articles and tales during his professional career. In October, 1884, Jules Lemaître was unknown; in December, 1884, he was famous; his articles on Renan, Zola, and Ohnet made his literary fortune with unexampled rapidity. During the years 1885-6-7 he continued the study of the literature of the day in various essays; meanwhile, in 1886, he was appointed dramatic critic of the Journal des Débats, and about the same time began to publish articles and tales in Le Figaro. M. Jules Lemaître, already the successor of Sainte-Beuve and Jules Janin in his double quality of literary and dramatic critic, has also manifested indubitable talent as a play-writer in the piece called Révoltée, produced at the Odeon in 1889, and in Le Député Leveau and Un Mariage Blance.

A more descriptive and lyrical portrait of the author by Jeanne Mairet in “Reminiscences of a Franco-American, No. 1—Jules Lemaître” (The Critic, Volume 48)

What M. Lemaître did not say in so many words, though he let it be understood, was that his easy, nonchalant criticism rested on a very sure basis of solid learning and of impeccable taste. No one among his contemporaries went deeper (when he chose to do so) into the soul of a writer or dissected with a more pitiless scalpel an overrated talent than did M. Jules Lemaître.
…
In those days he was about thirty-five and looked almost fifty. His hair inclined to curl, early turned gray, then white, leaving him a little bald. This added to the height of his forehead, and made the rather insignificant features appear a little lacking in space, as though the face had been of India rubber and pressed too hard. The expression, the glint of the blue eyes, soon forced one to forget his rather unsatisfactory physique. When he spoke, he let his words drop with a sort of careless grace, with a little hesitation too; the voice was gentles and rather high-pitched.
…
He loved the things appertaining to religious ceremonies: the swelling harmonies of the organ, the discreet shuffling of feet, the faint odor of incense, the lights and the flowers of the altar. He had been admitted to convent parlors, for visits to some relative; and the hushed peace of the place, even the stiff chairs against the walls, and the abominable pious chromos or painted statues which served as decoration to the room appealed to him. … And these things, lovely or puerile, silently peaceful, changed the man of the world, the successful critic, the political combattant, once more into the ardently pious little boy who once knelt in his village church.

In The Contemporary French Writers by Rosine Mellé (Boston: Ginn & Company, 1894)

Critical Notices:

Paul Bourget in “The Critical Essay in France” (Longman’s Magazine, Volume 34):

Paul Bourget describes the “Impressionist” school of French lit criticism, exemplified by Jules Lemaître and Anatole France, as holding that “to criticize a book is to note the ideas to which the book gives rise in their minds.”

The distance that separates an 18th century novel from the novel of our time is no doubt enormous. Yet it is less than the disparity between a page of La Harpe or of Geoffroy and a page of Taine or of M. Jules Lemaître.
…
The essays of M. Jules Lemaître and of M. Anatole France evinced the continued application of an analogous method, an unceasing assimilation of thoughts and passions quite foreign to their own. If we regard the work of these two writers as the terminal of a process of evolution initiated by Sainte-Beuve, and treat M. Renan’s work as an intermediate phase, we are enabled to trace with exactitude the whole line of development. With Sainte-Beuve, the critical essay ceased to be dogmatic, with Renan it ceased to be concludent, with M. France and M. Lemaître it tended more and more to impressionism. The two perspicacious writers hold that to criticise a book is to note the ideas to which the book give rise in their minds. This attitude closely resembles the attitude of the artist who depicts life itself, and it is because of this resemblance that those who take this point of view pass so simply, so naturally, and so successfully from the essayist’s function to that of the dramatist or the novelist.

“M. Jules Lemaître” in Aspects of Fiction and Other Ventures in Criticism by Brander Matthews (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1902)