Jacques Cazotte was a French

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

 author

Author

An author is broadly defined as "the person who originates or gives existence to anything" and that authorship determines responsibility for what is created. Narrowly defined, an author is the originator of any written work.-Legal significance:...

.

Born at Dijon

Dijon

Dijon is a city in eastern France, the capital of the Côte-d'Or département and of the Burgundy region.Dijon is the historical capital of the region of Burgundy. Population : 151,576 within the city limits; 250,516 for the greater Dijon area....

, he was educated by the Jesuits. Cazotte then worked for the French Ministry of
the Marine and at the age of 27 he obtained a public office at Martinique

Martinique

Martinique is an island in the eastern Caribbean Sea, with a land area of . Like Guadeloupe, it is an overseas region of France, consisting of a single overseas department. To the northwest lies Dominica, to the south St Lucia, and to the southeast Barbados...

.
It was not till his return to Paris in 1760 with the rank of commissioner-general that he made his public debut as an author. His first attempts, a mock romance and a coarse song, gained so much popularity, both in the Court and among the people, that he was encouraged to try something more ambitious. He accordingly produced his romance, Les Prouesses inimitables d'Ollivier, marquis d'Edesse.

He also wrote a number of fantastic oriental tales, such as his children's fairy tale

Fairy tale

A fairy tale is a type of short story that typically features such folkloric characters, such as fairies, goblins, elves, trolls, dwarves, giants or gnomes, and usually magic or enchantments. However, only a small number of the stories refer to fairies...

 La patte du chat
(The Cat's Paw, 1741) and the humorous Mille et une fadaises, Contes a dormir debout
(The Thousand and One Follies, Tales to Sleep Upright 1742). His first success was with a "poem" in twelve cantos, and in prose intermixed with verse, entitled Ollivier (2 vols, 1762), followed in 1771 by another romance, the Lord Impromptu. But the most popular of his works was Le Diable amoureux (The Devil in Love, 1772), a fantastic tale in which the hero raises the devil. The value of the story lies in the picturesque setting, and the skill with which its details are carried out. With the help of the Syrian priest Dom Denis Chavis, he translated some Arabian legends into French for the fairy tale anthology Le Cabinet des fées (1788-1790).

Cazotte possessed extreme facility and is said to have dashed off a seventh canto

Canto

The canto is a principal form of division in a long poem, especially the epic. The word comes from Italian, meaning "song" or singing. Famous examples of epic poetry which employ the canto division are Lord Byron's Don Juan, Valmiki's Ramayana , Dante's The Divine Comedy , and Ezra Pound's The...

 of Voltaire

Voltaire

François-Marie Arouet , better known by the pen name Voltaire , was a French Enlightenment writer, historian and philosopher famous for his wit and for his advocacy of civil liberties, including freedom of religion, free trade and separation of church and state...

's Guerre civile de Genève in a single night. About 1775 Cazotte embraced the views of the Illuminati

Illuminati

The Illuminati is a name given to several groups, both real and fictitious. Historically the name refers to the Bavarian Illuminati, an Enlightenment-era secret society founded on May 1, 1776...

, declaring himself possessed of the power of prophecy. It was upon this event that Jean-François de la Harpe

Jean-François de La Harpe

Jean-François de La Harpe was a French playwright, writer and critic.-Life:La Harpe was born in Paris of poor parents. His father, who signed himself Delharpe, was a descendant of a noble family originally of Vaud...

 based his famous jeu d'esprit, in which he represents Cazotte as prophesying the most minute events of the French Revolution

French Revolution

The French Revolution , sometimes distinguished as the 'Great French Revolution' , was a period of radical social and political upheaval in France and Europe. The absolute monarchy that had ruled France for centuries collapsed in three years...

. Near
the end of his life, Cazotte became a follower of the Martinist

Martinism

Martinism is a form of mystical and esoteric Christianity concerned with the fall of the first man, his state of material privation from his divine source, and the process of his return, called 'Reintegration' or illumination....

 mysticism of Martinez de Pasqually

Martinez de Pasqually

Jacques de Livron Joachim de la Tour de la Casa Martinez de Pasqually Was a theurgist and theosophist of uncertain origin.He was the founder of the l'Ordre de Chevaliers Maçons Élus Coëns de l'Univers - Commonly referred to as the 'Elus Cohens' in 1761.He was the tutor, initiator and friend of...

, and became a "mystical monarchist".
On the discovery of some of his counter-revolutionary letters in August 1792, Cazotte was arrested; and though he escaped for a time through the efforts of his daughter, he was beheaded

Decapitation

Decapitation is the separation of the head from the body. Beheading typically refers to the act of intentional decapitation, e.g., as a means of murder or execution; it may be accomplished, for example, with an axe, sword, knife, wire, or by other more sophisticated means such as a guillotine...

 the following month.

A complete edition of his work was published as the Œuvres badines et morales, historiques et philosophiques de Jacques Cazotte (4 vols, 1816-1817), though more than one collection appeared during his lifetime. Cazotte's work was an influence on later fantasy writers
such as E. T. A. Hoffmann, Gérard de Nerval

Gérard de Nerval

Gérard de Nerval was the nom-de-plume of the French poet, essayist and translator Gérard Labrunie, one of the most essentially Romantic French poets.- Biography :...

 and Théophile Gautier

Théophile Gautier

Pierre Jules Théophile Gautier was a French poet, dramatist, novelist, journalist, art critic and literary critic....

.

Writings

• Prophetie de Cazotte (Reputed)
• Ollivier, 1762.
• Le Diable amoureux (The Devil in Love), 1772.