Prosper Mérimée - Épisode de l'histoire de Russie - 1893

Prosper Mérimée - Episode from the History of Russia. The False Demetriuses (bound edition of 1893)

Prosper Mérimée - Episode from the History of Russia. The False Demetriuses (new edition of 1893, Calmann Lévy, Paris, 454 pages, 12.5 x 18 cm, half-percaline binding)

After studying law, he turns to literature and, from 1825, begins publishing short stories that make him known and earn him election to the French Academy in 1844.
In 1831, he enters the ministerial offices and, in 1834, becomes Inspector General of Historic Monuments. He then undertakes numerous inspection journeys across France and entrusts the architect Eugène Viollet-le-Duc with the restoration of endangered edifices such as the Basilica of Vézelay in 1840, Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris in 1843, or the Cité of Carcassonne from 1853 onward. Close to Empress Eugénie, he is named senator in 1853 and leads the court salons, for example with his famous dictation in 1857. He then publishes fewer literary texts to devote himself to historical and archaeological work and initiates, from 1842, a classification of historic monuments to which the Mérimée database, created in 1978, pays homage.