Nicolas Chorier

Born in Vienne in 1612 and later active in Grenoble, Nicolas Chorier was a French lawyer, writer, and historian. He is especially remembered for his work on the history of Dauphiné, a region in southeastern France, which helped secure his reputation as a learned chronicler of local life and politics.

He also became associated with L'Académie des dames—often known in English as The School of Women—an erotic dialogue that gave his name a very different kind of afterlife. Because of that contrast, Chorier is one of those writers who can seem to belong to two worlds at once: the careful scholar of regional history and the figure linked to one of the more notorious libertine texts of the period.

He died in Grenoble in 1692. Today, he remains an intriguing example of how wide a writer's legacy can be, especially in an era when scholarship, public life, and literary controversy often overlapped.