Copp�e, Fran�ois 1842-1908
French poet

Born in Paris, he was a war-office clerk for three years. He soon turned to poetry, and with Le Reliquaire (1866, 'The Reliquary') and Les Intimit�s (1867, 'Intimacies') he became a leading Parnassian. Later volumes of poetry include Les Humbles (1872), Olivier (1876, his one long poem), and Contes en vers ('Stories in Verse'). His earliest dramatic poem, Le Passant (1869, 'The Wayfarer'), owed much to Sarah Bernhardt, and was followed by such works as Le Luthier de Cr�mone (1876, 'The Lute Maker from Cremona'), Madame de Maintenon (1881), and Pour la couronne (1895, 'For the Crown'). Other works include Contes en prose ('Prose Tales') and Vingt Contes nouveaux ('Twenty New Tales') and a novel about religious conversion, La Bonne souffrance (1898, 'The Healthy Pain'), written after he became a Catholic. He was a prominent associate of the anti-Semitic Ligue de la patrie fran�aise during the Dreyfus affair.

Bibliography: L Le Meur, La vie et l'?uvre de Fran�ois Copp�e (1932)