author
Henry Gréville
1842–1902
A bestselling French novelist of the late 19th century, she wrote under a masculine pen name and drew on her years in Russia to give many of her stories a vivid, international setting. Her work was widely read in France and beyond, especially novels like Dosia that brought Russian life to French readers.
6 Audiobooks
Ariadne
by Henry Gréville
L'expiation de Saveli
by Henry Gréville
Suzanne Normis: Roman d'un père
by Henry Gréville
The Little Russian Servant
by Henry Gréville
La Niania
by Henry Gréville
La fille de Dosia
by Henry Gréville
About the author
Born in Paris on 12 October 1842 as Alice Marie Céleste Fleury, she became known to readers as Henry Gréville. Her father was a professor, and she spent important years in St. Petersburg, where she studied and absorbed the language and culture that would later shape much of her fiction. She married Émile Durand, a French law professor in Petersburg, and returned to France in 1872.
She had already begun publishing in St. Petersburg journals, but her reputation grew quickly in France. Early novels such as Dosia and L'Expiation de Savéli introduced French audiences to Russian society, and Dosia won the Montyon Prize. She went on to write prolifically across fiction and drama, building a large readership in the closing decades of the 19th century.
Henry Gréville died in 1902. Remembered for her accessible storytelling and for the way she connected French and Russian worlds in her books, she remains an intriguing figure: a French woman writer who chose a male pen name and turned cross-cultural experience into popular literature.