author
Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve
1804–1869
A sharp, influential critic of 19th-century France, he helped shape the idea that a writer’s life can illuminate their work. He also wrote poetry and the novel Volupté, but it was his essays and literary portraits that made his name.
5 Audiobooks
Literary and Philosophical Essays: French, German and Italian
by Michel de Montaigne, Immanuel Kant, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Giuseppe Mazzini, Ernest Renan, Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve, Friedrich Schiller
Portraits littéraires, Tome II
by Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve
Portraits littéraires, Tome I
by Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve
Monsieur de Talleyrand
by Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve
Portraits littéraires, Tome III
by Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve
About the author
Born in Boulogne-sur-Mer in 1804 and later active in Paris, Charles-Augustin Sainte-Beuve became one of France’s best-known literary critics and historians. He first studied medicine, then turned to journalism and criticism, writing for periodicals and building a reputation for close, personal readings of authors and their backgrounds.
He was associated with the Romantic movement early on and was connected with major literary figures of his time, including Victor Hugo. Over the years he published poems, the novel Volupté (1834), and many essays that were later gathered into important collections such as Portraits littéraires and Port-Royal.
Sainte-Beuve is especially remembered for a biographical approach to criticism: he believed that understanding an author’s character, life, and surroundings could help explain the work. Whether readers agree with that method or not, his influence on literary criticism was lasting, and his writing remains a major part of 19th-century French literary culture.