author
Jacques-Henri Meister
1744–1826
An 18th-century Swiss writer and journalist, he moved through the worlds of theology, philosophy, and literary criticism with unusual ease. His life took him from the pulpit in Zurich to the heart of European intellectual life in Paris.
1 Audiobook
Souvenirs de mon dernier voyage à Paris (1795)
by Jacques-Henri Meister
About the author
Born on August 6, 1744, in Bückeburg, Jacques-Henri Meister was the son of a French Reformed pastor and came from a Protestant family in exile. He first trained for the ministry and briefly served as a pastor in Zurich, but the publication of De l’origine des principes religieux in 1768 cost him both his post and his civic rights for a time.
Meister later became much better known as a man of letters than as a clergyman. He spent time in Paris as secretary to Friedrich Melchior Grimm and was associated with the Correspondance littéraire, the influential manuscript review read by Europe’s educated elite. He also wrote travel-based and reflective works, including letters on England and memoir-like writings on Paris during the revolutionary era.
Remembered today as a cosmopolitan Swiss author, Meister worked across journalism, criticism, and philosophy, linking Swiss and French-speaking intellectual circles at a moment of major political and cultural change. He died in Zurich in 1826.