Eugène Melchior de Vogüé

Born Feb. 24, 1848, in Nice; died Mar. 24, 1910, in Paris. French writer and literary historian; member of the Academic Françhise (1888).

Vogüé spent about seven years in Russia as secretary of the French embassy, and during this time mastered the Russian language and Russian literature. Vogüé became known through his book The Russian Novel (1886), which rated Russian literature very high, especially I. S. Turgenev and L. N. Tolstoy. Later he wrote on F. M. Dostoevsky, A. P. Chekhov, and M. Gorky and was the first to note the importance of their art for the Western European reader. He wrote the collection of short stories Russian Hearts (1893), diaries about Russia, and three dramas based on Russian history—Tsarevich Aleksei, Mazepa, and Pavel I’s Accession to the Throne (1884). Vogüé also wrote the novels Jean d’Agreve (1898) and Voice of the Dead (1899; Russian” translation, 1899); in the latter he described French parliamentary government satirically but from a conservative standpoint. Though they were biased in their approach, Vogüé’s works helped to popularize Russian literature abroad.