Jacques-Henri Bernardin

Jacques-Henri Bernardin de Saint-Pierre (January 19, 1737 - January 21, 1814) was a French writer and botanist. He is best known for his 1787 novel Paul et Virginie. In 1795 he was elected to the Institut de France the predecessor of the Académie Française.

He was born in Le Havre. He died in Éragny, Val-d'Oise.

From Antoine-Louis Barye: Sculptor of Romantic Realism by Glenn F. Benge, p.8:

"Bayre's predators devouring their living prey indulge the emotions in a Romantic way of course, but they also embody a romantically moralizing point of view like those held by Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, Mme de Staël, and Victor Hugo. The Oeuvres complètes of Bernardin de Saint-Pierre appeared in Paris in 1834 and was surely known to Bayre, for the author was the former director of the zoo in the Jardin des Plantes and one of the "masters of genuine poetry" for the archromantic Mme de Staël. Bernardin de Saint-Pierre maintained that a carnivorous animal in devouring its prey alive committed a sin against the laws of its own nature."

Works

• Voyage à l'Île de France, à l'île Bourbon et au cap de Bonne-Espérance, 2 vol. (1773)
• L'Arcadie (1781)
• Études de la nature, 3 vol. (1784)
• Paul et Virginie (1787)
• La Chaumière indienne (1790)
• Le Café de Surate (1790)
• Les Voeux d'un solitaire (1790)
• De la nature de la morale (1798)
• Voyage en Sibérie (1807)
• Harmonies de la nature, 3 vol. (1815)