author
A. Piron
Best remembered for sharp wit and lively comic writing, this 18th-century French dramatist made his name with sparkling epigrams and the comedy La Métromanie. His career mixed literary success with a rebellious streak that kept him a memorable figure in French letters.
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About the author
Born in Dijon in 1689, Alexis Piron first worked as a clerk and secretary before studying law, but literature drew him more strongly than legal work. He moved to Paris in 1719 and gradually built a reputation as a clever, daring writer with a gift for satire and stage comedy.
Piron became especially known for his epigrams and for La Métromanie (1738), the work most closely associated with his name. Contemporary accounts and later reference works describe him as a brilliant wit whose writing captured both humor and social observation, helping him stand out in the literary world of his time.
He died in Paris in 1773. Although he wrote in several forms, he is chiefly remembered today as a dramatist and satirist whose quick intelligence and playful style kept his work alive long after his own century.