Prosper Mérimée, produces his chronicle play, La…

Prosper Mérimée, produces his chronicle play, La Jacquerie, about the famous French peasant insurrection during the Hundred Years’ War, in 1828.

A twenty-five-year-old Paris-born dramatist and short story writer inspired by the historical fiction popularized by Sir Walter Scott, Mérimée has studied law as well as Greek, Spanish, English, and Russian.

He had destroyed the manuscript of his first play, the unpublished Cromwell, written in 1822, feeling its similarities with contemporary French politics were too obvious.

Mérimée has also written two hoaxes: Le Théâtre de Clara Gazul (1825), supposedly a translation by one Joseph L'Estrange of work written by a Spanish actress; and La Guzla (1827), ballads about various mystical themes purportedly translated from the original "Illyrian" (i.e., Serbo-Croatian) by one Hyacinthe Maglanowich.

These ballads are to have considerable influence, later translated into Russian, notably by Pushkin and Lermontov.