Philarète Chasles (1798–1873)

Victor Euphémion Philarète Chasles was a French literary critic, journalist, and one of the founding figures of comparative literature in France. Born on 6 October 1798 in Mainvilliers, Eure-et-Loir — son of a regicide member of the Convention — he spent his early adulthood in London as a printer's apprentice before returning to France in 1818, where he became secretary to the writer Étienne de Jouy.1

During the 1844–46 period of Monte Cristo's serialization, Chasles was a regular feuilleton contributor to the Journal des Débats, where he had been attached since the late 1820s. His beat was foreign and especially English literature: he reviewed Charles Lamb (November 1842), wrote on Robert Wilson and English letters (May 1843), and published comparative studies such as a piece on Montaigne, Amyot, and Shakespeare (November 1846). He is widely credited with introducing English, German, Scandinavian, and Russian literature — including early notice of writers like Herman Melville and Jean Paul Richter — to French readers who had little access to it otherwise.2

In 1837 he was appointed conservator of the Bibliothèque Mazarine, a post he held until his death, and in 1841 he became professor of comparative and Germanic/English literature at the Collège de France. His major critical work, the 20-volume Études de littérature comparée (1846–1875), grew out of decades of journalism and lectures; he later called the body of work Trente ans de critique. Contemporaries described him as brilliant but eccentric — a 19th-century review of his work noted his "extravagance of manner" alongside solid critical judgment. He died of cholera in Venice on 18 July 1873.1