author
Eugène Labiche
1815–1888
A master of French comic theatre, this 19th-century playwright turned middle-class habits, anxieties, and social pretensions into sparkling farce. Best known for vaudevilles and brisk stage comedies, he helped shape the modern comedy of manners.
1 Audiobook
Le Voyage de Monsieur Perrichon: Comédie en quatre actes
by Eugène Labiche, Édouard Martin
About the author
Born in Paris in May 1815, Eugène Labiche became one of France’s most successful comic playwrights. He studied law for a time, but writing drew him away from that path, and he went on to build a major career in the theatre.
Labiche is especially remembered for lively farces and vaudevilles that poke fun at bourgeois life. He wrote a very large number of plays, often in collaboration, and works such as The Italian Straw Hat helped secure his long reputation for quick plotting, sharp observation, and comic timing.
His success on the French stage lasted for decades, and in 1880 he was elected to the Académie française. He died in Paris in January 1888, but his comedies have remained widely read, performed, and adapted.