aul Hervieu (1857–1915) French novelist and playwright - Autograph signed letter to a Madame about his illness and and to be unable to come to an apointment -dated 24 June 1895 Paul Hervieu (2 September 1857 – 25 October 1915) was a French novelist and playwright. Hervieu was called to the bar in 1877, and, after serving some time in the office of the president of the council, he qualified for the diplomatic service, but resigned on his nomination in 1881 to a secretaryship in the French legation in Mexico. He contributed novels, tales and essays to the chief Parisian papers and reviews, and published a series of clever novels, including L'Inconnue (1887), Flirt (1890, illustrated by Madeleine Lemaire), L'Exorcisée (1891), Peints par eux-mêmes (1893), an ironic study written in the form of letters, and L'Armature (1895), dramatized in 1905 by Eugène Brieux. Hervieu's plays are built upon a severely logical method, the mechanism of which is sometimes so evident as to destroy the necessary sense of illusion. The closing words of La Course du flambeau (1901) "Pour ma fille, j'ai tué ma mère" (For my daughter, I killed my mother), are an example of his selection of a plot representing an extreme theory. The riddle in L'Énigme (1901) (staged at Wyndham's Theatre, London, 1 March 1902, as Caesar's Wife) is, however, worked out with great art, and Le Dédale (1903), dealing with the obstacles to the remarriage of a divorced woman, is reckoned among the masterpieces of the modern French stage. He produced his last play, Le Destin est Maître, in 1914. He was elected to the Académie française in 1900. Provenance: untouched privat collection ca. 1900. mounted on an 19th Cent Album leaf (may be easily to split). #C213 L'âge et l'origine sont garantis