Eugène de Lamerlière

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Eugène de Lamerlière (full name Hugues-Marie Humbert Bocon de La Merlière) was a French writer and playwright born on 5 January 1797 in Saint-Marcellin, Isère. He was the last member of a noble family from the Dauphiné. He studied law in Grenoble, joined the army in 1812, and served in the royal household of Louis XVIII from 1814 to 1817. In 1819 he moved to Paris and, thanks to his friend Charles Nodier, entered literary circles. He published his first work in 1821, a sentimental novel called Souvenirs de madame Jenny L. His plays were successful in Paris, and he opened a small dramatic center in Lyon in 1824, staging about fifty works (drama, comedy and vaudeville), though few were published. In 1832 he started the literary journal Le Papillon, selling it a few months later. In 1836 he bought the newspaper Le Commerce and edited it until 1840. In 1841 he moved to Blida, Algeria, and nothing more is known about him after that. Some of his plays were performed in Lyon and Paris at the Théâtre des Variétés, but most are now forgotten.