Jacques Cazotte (French: [kazɔt]; 17 October 1719 – 25 September 1792) was a French writer and a monarchist. He predicted the Reign of Terror and was guillotined shortly after.
Life
Born in Dijon, he was educated by the Jesuits. Cazotte then worked for the French Ministry of
the Marine. From 1747 to 1759, he was a colonial administrator on Martinique, working for the Department of the Marine. Due to ill health, he returned to France in 1759.
It was not until his return to Paris in 1760 with the rank of commissioner-general that he made his public debut as an author. His first attempts, a mock romance and a coarse song, gained so much popularity, both in the Court and among the people, that he was encouraged to try something more ambitious. He accordingly produced his romance, Les Prouesses inimitables d'Ollivier, marquis d'Edesse.
Cazotte wrote a number of fantastic oriental tales, such as his children's fairy tale La patte du chat
(The Cat's Paw, 1741) and the humorous Mille et une fadaises, Contes a dormir debout
(The Thousand and One Follies, Tales to Sleep Upright 1742). His first success was with a "poem" in twelve cantos, and in prose intermixed with verse, entitled Ollivier (2 vols, 1762), followed in 1771 by another romance, the Lord Impromptu. But the most popular of his works was Le Diable amoureux (The Devil in Love, 1772), a fantastic tale in which the hero raises the Devil. The value of the story lies in the picturesque setting, and the skill with which its details are carried out.
