Norman, the son of an avocat holding an official position in Rouen. He was educated by the Jesuits, showing a taste for Latin verses, adopted the profession of his father, and held and discharged the duties of certain offices until as late as 1650. The labours and ambitions of the poet did not exclude those of the citizen and family man. During the years in which his finest and most original work was done he was a magistrate in Rouen, visiting Paris at intervals to arrange for the production of his plays, and to mingle, a little awkwardly, and not with all the dignity of his own heroes, in the literary and polite circles of Richelieu and the Hôtel de Rambouillet.
Rouen was frequently visited by the travelling companies of actors, of whose importance we have already spoken. For one of these, originally the Comédiens du Prince d' Orange, under Guillaume Desgilberts, Sieur de Mondory, Corneille wrote his first play, Mélite; and with it the company opened in Paris (1629) a career of successful rivalry to the Comédiens du Roi, which after some trouble, due to the privileges of the older company, culminated in the opening, in 1634, of the
mentioned in opening bibliographical notes. A complete bibliography of the editions, translations, and criticisms of Corneille was issued by M. Émile Picot, Bibliographie Cornélienne, 1876. Voltaire's notes on Corneille are piquant and characteristic. Guizot, Corneille et son Temps, Paris, 1842 (first ed. 1813), is a notable work. Since the publication of Petit de Julleville's Histoire Générale, in which the article on Corneille is by M. Jules Lemaitre, has appeared M. Lanson's Corneille, Paris, 1898 (Les Grands Écrivains français).
