Victor Cherbuliez

He was descended from a family of Protestant refugees, and many years later Victor Cherbuliez resumed his French nationality, taking advantage of an act passed in the early days of the Revolution.

After his resumption of French citizenship he was elected a member of the Académie Française (1881), and having received the Legion of Honour in 1870, he was promoted to be officer of the order in 1892.

His first book, originally published in 1860, reappeared in 1864 under the title of Un Cheval de Phidias: it is a romantic study of art in the golden age of Athens.

[1] According to Robert Crewe-Milnes in the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition: The earlier novels of Cherbuliez have been said to show marked traces of the influence of George Sand; his method was that of an older school.

He did not possess the sombre power or the intensely analytical skill of some of his later contemporaries, but his books are distinguished by a freshness and honesty, fortified by cosmopolitan knowledge and lightened by unobtrusive humour, which fully account for their wide popularity in many countries besides his own.