Henry Gréville

Alice Marie Céleste Durand (née Fleury; 12 October 1842 in Paris – 26 May 1902) was a French writer best known under her pen name Henry Gréville.

[1] She married Émile Durand, a French law professor at Petersburg, with whom she returned to France in 1872.

Her sojourn in Russia had left pictures and memories that she was able to evoke and communicate with wonderful precision and vividness.

To her great powers of observation, were added imaginative qualities, as may be seen in her Koumiassine, La Princesse Ogheroff, and L'Expiation de Savéli.

Despite the fundamental insipidity of these rosewater stories, like Le Roman d'un père, Le Moulin frapier, and others, they found abundance of readers by reason of their clear and flowing style and the art with which the plot was devised to give continuity and at the same time produce surprises.