Gustave Drouineau

Gustave Pierre Drouineau (22 February 1798 – 19 April 1878) was a 19th-century French novelist, poet and playwright.

Coming from a family of doctors of La Rochelle, he moved to Paris to study law and live from poetry. In 1826 he obtained a great success with his romantic drama Rienzi which would tour Europe, experience numerous translations and may have been a source of inspiration to Richard Wagner for his opera Rienzi (1828). His plays were presented on the most important Parisian stages of his time including the Théâtre de la Porte-Saint-Martin, the Théâtre de l'Odéon, and the Théâtre de l'Ambigu-Comique.

His novel Ernest ou le travers du siècle published in 1829 by Timothée Dehay became a best-seller, inspiring even Balzac for his Illusions perdues (1837). The following novels did not experience the same success. After the death of his wife from consumption, he immersed himself in spirituality. In 1833, he founded a sect which he named neo-Christianity and stopped definitively writing in 1835. His family had then him interned at the hospice of Lafond hospice where he plunged into total oblivion and ended his life.