Claude Guillaume Bourdon de Sigrais

Claude-Guillaume Bourdon de Sigrais was a French writer born in 1715 in Lons-le-Saunier in the Jura and died in 1791. He was elected to the Académie royale des inscriptions et belles-lettres in 1752, a sign of the literary and scholarly reputation he had built in his lifetime.

He is best known today for Histoire des rats, pour servir à l'histoire universelle, an unusual and playful work that approaches the world through the imagined history of rats. The book stands out for its satirical spirit and for the way it turns a seemingly small subject into a broader reflection on people, society, and history.

Although many details of his life are not easy to confirm from readily available sources, he clearly belonged to the lively world of French letters in the eighteenth century. His surviving reputation rests on that mix of learning, wit, and inventive perspective that still makes his work memorable.