François Coppée

François Coppée (Paris, 1842 – Paris, 1908) was a French poet, playwright and novelist associated with the Parnassian school. He wrote in French, and his name is linked above all to simple verse about everyday emotions and the lives of ordinary, poor people, which was widely read in late nineteenth-century France.

The son of a civil servant, he attended the Lycée Saint-Louis and began work as a clerk in the Ministry of War. His first verses appeared in 1864, and the collection Le Reliquaire (1866) placed him among the Parnassians, although he soon moved away from their grand manner in favour of plain, everyday language kept within classical metre. His first play, Le Passant, was well received at the Odéon in 1869. After a post in the Senate library, he was appointed archivist of the Comédie-Française in 1878, a role he held until 1884, the year he was elected to the Académie française and gave up public office.

His output spans lyric poetry, verse drama, fiction and journalism. His poems deal with patriotism, the first flush of love and pity for the poor, in a musical but unadorned style; a few, such as La Grève des forgerons, show real force. For the stage he wrote historical dramas and short pieces inspired by the Franco-Prussian War, including Fais ce que dois and Les Bijoux de la délivrance. His prose includes short stories and novels such as Toute une jeunesse, which draws on his own youth, and Les Vrais Riches.

After a serious illness that twice brought him close to death, he returned to the Catholic Church, an experience described in La Bonne Souffrance (1898). In the years of the Dreyfus affair he sided with the most hardline nationalists and helped found the Ligue de la patrie française, a stance that now colours how he is remembered. His legacy rests mainly on his accessible, popular poetry, which was admired in his lifetime, though later critics often found it conventional. Younger poets such as Rimbaud parodied his manner, a sign of how fully he embodied the taste of his age.