Jean-Baptiste Louvet de Couvray

Born in Paris in 1760, he was the son of a stationer and began working as a bookseller's clerk before turning to writing. He first made his name with Les Amours du chevalier de Faublas, published between the late 1780s and early 1790s, a lively and scandalous novel sequence that found a wide readership.

As the French Revolution unfolded, he became active not just as a novelist and playwright but also as a journalist and political figure. He was associated with the Girondins, spoke out forcefully during the Revolution, and spent part of this turbulent period in flight after the fall of his faction.

Later, he wrote memoirs about those years, adding a personal witness to his literary reputation. He died in Paris in 1797, still in his thirties, leaving behind a body of work that links the energetic, pleasure-seeking fiction of the late eighteenth century with the fierce public life of revolutionary France.