- Source: Charles Rabou
Charles Félix Henri Rabou (6 September 1803 – 1 February 1871) was a 19th-century French writer, novelist and journalist.
Biography
The son of a military sub-intendant, he studied at the collège Henri IV before attending law classes at the Faculty of Dijon. Back in Paris with his degree in law, he turned away from the bar in favor of literature. First a journalist for La Quotidienne, Le Messager des Chambres, Le Nouvelliste, le Journal de Paris, La Charte de 1830, he held political and literary chronicles, then in 1832 launched La Cour d'Assise, to be published until 1834.
Publication de Balzac
Director of the prestigious Revue de Paris which he helped establish, he befriended Honoré de Balzac whose novels he published in the pages of his paper. Mutual trust was such that Balzac entrusted him with the task to complete some unfinished novels after his death: Le Député d'Arcis (1854), Le Comte de Sallenauve (1855), La Famille Beauvisage (1855), Les Petits Bourgeois (1856), a task Rabou performed honestly but that was coldly greeted by the critics.
He was falsely accused of being Balzac's ghostwriter. Charles Rabou continued to produce great works of literature that deserve to be rediscovered.
Works
Source:
= Collections
=1832: Contes bruns (with Honoré de Balzac and Philarète Chasles):
Sara la danseuse
Tobias Guarnerius
Les Regrets
Le Ministère public
= Novels
=1831: Le Mannequin (1831)
1839: Les Tribulations et métamorphoses posthumes de maître Fabricius, peintre liégeois (reprinted in 1860)
1840: Louison d'Arquien
1842: Le Capitaine Lambert
1845: La Reine d'un jour
1846: Madame de Chaumergis
1845: L'Allée des veuves
1849: Le Cabinet noir. Les Frères de la mort
1857: La Fille sanglante
1858: Le Marquis de Vulpiano
1860: Les Grands danseurs du Roi
= Continuation of Balzac
=1854: Scènes de la vie politique. Le Député d'Arcis
1854: Le Comte de Sallenauve
1855: La Famille Beauvisage
1855: Les Petits bourgeois, scènes de la vie parisienne
= Historical essay
=1860: La Grande Armée
Bibliography
Charles Rabou on wikisource
Jacques Goimard et Roland Stragliati (éds.), Histoires de fantômes, éd. Presses Pocket, 1977
Jacques Goimard et Roland Stragliati (éds.), La Grande Anthologie du fantastique, t.2, éd. Omnibus, 1996
Florian Balduc (éd.),Fantaisies Hoffmaniennes, Editions Otrante, 2016