Casimir Delavigne

Jean-François Casimir Delavigne (Le Havre, 1793 - Lyon, 1843) was a French poet and dramatist who wrote in French during the Restoration and the July Monarchy. His reputation rested on patriotic verse and on the theatre, and for a time he was among the most widely read and performed authors of his day.

Born in the port city of Le Havre, he was sent to Paris to be educated at the Lycée Napoleon, where he read widely. As a young man he celebrated the birth of Napoleon's son in verse, which earned him a sinecure in the revenue office. After the Battle of Waterloo he wrote a set of impassioned poems, known as the Messéniennes, full of patriotic feeling and political allusion. They sold in enormous numbers, some twenty-five thousand copies, and made him a famous figure. He was then given an honorary post as librarian, with no real duties.

His greatest theatrical success came with Les Vêpres Siciliennes (1819), staged at the Odéon after the Comédie-Française had turned it down. His play Paria (1821) enjoyed a longer run than its literary qualities alone would explain, because of the political opinions it voiced; the king was displeased and Delavigne lost his post. Louis-Philippe then offered him a librarian's position at the Palais-Royal, which he kept until his death. There he wrote École des vieillards (1823), generally regarded as his best comedy, which helped win him a seat in the Académie française in 1825.

His later work mixed romantic drama, as in Marino Faliero (1829), with French history. The revolution of 1830 inspired La Parisienne, a song set to music by Daniel-François Auber that rivalled the Marseillaise in popularity. After a series of historical plays he left Paris in 1843 for Italy, hoping to recover his health, which had been worn down by overwork, but he died at Lyon on 11 December that year.

His legacy is mainly that of a writer of his period: his patriotic poems and historical dramas carried strong political resonance, though he is now remembered less than many of his romantic contemporaries. His brother Germain, a librettist, wrote a biographical notice for the edition of his collected works.