Octave Mirbeau

Octave Mirbeau was born on 16 February 1848 in Trévières, in Normandy, into a family of notaries. A pupil at the Jesuit college in Vannes, he was expelled from it at fifteen. After the war of 1870, he became secretary to the Bonapartist leader Dugué de la Fauconnerie, entered journalism in this way and wrote novels for others before signing under his own name. A critic at Le Figaro, he brought Maeterlinck to public notice in August 1890, and in the early 1890s he bought canvases by Van Gogh. An anarchist and a Dreyfusard, he died in Paris on 16 February 1917.

In the catalogue 1

• NovelThe Diary of a ChambermaidLe Journal d'une femme de chambreOctave Mirbeau · 1900LiteraturePublic domain