[1] His first success was with a "poem" in twelve cantos, and in prose intermixed with verse, entitled Ollivier (2 vols, 1762), followed in 1771 by another romance, the Lord Impromptu.
Cazotte copy-edited, adapted, and expanded French translations of tales actually and supposedly belonging to the Thousand and One Nights provided to him by the Syrian priest Dom Denis Chavis.
[1][3][4] Cazotte possessed extreme facility that he is said to have dashed off a seventh canto of Voltaire's Guerre civile de Genève in a single night.
A complete edition of his work was published as the Œuvres badines et morales, historiques et philosophiques de Jacques Cazotte (4 vols, 1816–1817), though more than one collection appeared during his lifetime.
Cazotte's work was an influence on later fantasy writers such as E. T. A. Hoffmann, Charles Nodier, Gérard de Nerval and Théophile Gautier.