Paul Henri Corentin Féval was born in
Rennes in Brittany on 29 September 1816. A number of his novels deals with the history of his native province. He was educated for the bar and became a full-fledged lawyer in
1836. However, he soon moved to
Paris, where he gained a footing by the publication of his novel
Le Club des phoques (
1841) in the
Revue de Paris. It was soon followed by two more swashbucklers:
Rollan Pied de Fer (
1842), Les Chevaliers du Firmament and
Le Loup Blanc (both 1843). The latter novel features a heroic albino who fights for justice in a
Zorro-like disguise, one of the earliest treatments of a crimefighter with a
secret identity.
Féval's break came with the
Les Mystères de Londres (
1844), a sprawling
feuilleton written to cash in on the success of
Eugène Sue's Les Mystères de Paris. In it, Irishman Fergus O'Breane tries to avenge the wrongs of his countrymen by seeking the annihilation of England. The plot anticipates that of
Alexandre Dumas, père's The Count of Monte Cristo by one year. The novel also features a
Mafia-like criminal
secret society called the
Gentlemen of the Night, a theme that will become recurrent in Féval's oeuvre.
With
Les Mystères de Londres, Féval became the equal of Dumas and Sue in the eyes of his contemporaries. However, he was unhappy about his success as the author of
adventure novels and soon tried to gain literary recognition with social satires such as
Le Tueur de Tigres (
1853), but in vain. He returned to popular literature with more swashbuckklers such as
La Louve (
1855) (a sequel to his earlier
Le Loup Blanc) and
L'Homme de Fer (
1856).
His biggest success in the genre was
Le Bossu (1857) in which a prodigious swordsman, Henri de Lagardère, disguises himself as a hunchback to avenge his friend the Duke de Nevers, murdered by the villainous Prince de Gonzague. It features the famous motto:
If you don't come to Largardère, Lagardère will come to you. Le Bossu has been the subject of half-a-dozen feature film adaptations and a number of sequels, written by Féval's son.
That same year, with
Les Compagnons du Silence, Féval returned to the theme of criminal conspiracies. It was followed by
Jean Diable (1862), arguably the first modern crime thriller. In it,
Scotland Yard Chief Superintendent Gregory Temple is mystified by the actions of a supremely gifted crime leader who hides behind the identity of John Devil.
In 1862, Féval founded the magazine
Jean Diable, named after his eponymous novel, and
Émile Gaboriau, future creator of the police detective
Monsieur Lecoq, a hero seemingly unrelated to the villainous Lecoq of the
Habits Noirs first introduced by Féval, was one of its editors. Gaboriau’s Lecoq later influenced
Conan Doyle’s creation of
Sherlock Holmes.
In 1863, Féval embarked on his masterpiece,
Les Habits Noirs, a sprawling criminal saga written over a twelve-year period, comprising seven novels. He retroactively incorporated
Les Mystères de Londres,
Les Compagnons du Silence (itself a sequel to an earlier work,
Bel Demonio (1850)) and
Jean Diable into the chronology of
Les Habits Noirs, creating a veritable human comedy of evil and secret conspiracies. By its methods, themes and characters,
Les Habits Noirs is the precursor of today’s conspiracy and organized crime novels. Féval’s heroes, from Gregory Temple, the first detective, to Remy d’Arx, the investigative magistrate who pursues the
Habits Noirs, are also the first modern heroes of their kind.
In 1865, Féval became President of the
Société des Gens de Lettre (Society of Authors), a position he kept until
1868. He was President again from
1874 to
1876.
In 1865, Féval also wrote
La Vampire, a seminal text featuring the perversely charismatic Countess Addhema, the first and foremost prototype of the female vampire-as-libido-run-wild theme. Some scholars claimed the text was initially penned in 1856, over 40 years before
Bram Stoker's Dracula.
Féval returned to the theme of vampirism with
La Ville Vampire (1867) the ultimate literary ancestor of
Buffy the Vampire-Slayer in which the protagonist is
Gothic novel writer
Ann Radcliffe herself. In it, to save her friends from the dreaded vampire lord Otto Goetzi, Radcliffe and her fearless vampire hunting companions, Merry Bones the Irishman, Grey Jack the faithful old servant, the revenge-driven Doctor Magnus Szegeli, and Polly Bird, one of the vampire's earlier victims, mount an expedition to find the legendary vampire city of Selene.
In
1873 and
1875, Féval tried to join the
Academie Française but was rejected, because of the popular nature of his works, but also because of his political convictions.
In 1875, a few months after finishing
La Bande Cadet, the seventh volume in the
Habits Noirs series, Féval lost nearly all his fortune–the staggering sum of 800,000 francs–several million dollars by today’s reckoning–in a financial scandal linked to the
Ottoman Empire. As a result, he became what today would be called a born-again Christian, and stopped writing crime novels, which he then considered sinful. In fact, he reclaimed the rights to his earlier books and tried to rewrite them to better conform to his new principles. He also began writing religious-themed novels such as
La Première Aventure de Corentin Quimper (
1876) and
Pierre Blot (
1877).
In
1882, Paul Féval was again ruined, the victim of an embezzler. He became paralyzed and unable to write. In April
1884, he suffered another blow when he lost his wife. He was taken to the hospice of the Brothers of Saint-Jean de Dieu where he died on 8 March 1887.
His son,
Paul Féval, fils (1860-1933) also became a prolific writer.
