Jean-François Regnard had inherited a fortune from…

Jean-François Regnard had inherited a fortune from his father, a successful merchant who had given him an excellent classical education; he had then increased it, he affirms, by gambling.

He took to traveling, and on a return voyage from Italy in 1678 was at the age of twenty-two captured by an Algerian pirate, sold as a slave in Algiers and taken to Constantinople, where the French consul paid ransom for his release.

He went on traveling, undaunted.

His Voyage de Flandre et de Hollande, commencé le 26 avril 1681, reporting his trip through the Low Countries, Denmark and Sweden, where he dallied at the courts of Christian V and Charles XI and then north to Lapland, returning through Poland, Hungary and Germany to France, is mined by social historians.

The section often published on its own, his Voyage de Laponie, largely inspired by Johannes Schefferus, describes the way of life of the Sami of Lapland; it will not be published until 1731, when its description of the backwardness and simplicity of the Sami people, their curious pagan customs, alcohol addiction and untidy lifestyle, introduces these strangers to cultured Europe.

After his return to Paris he had purchased a sinecure in the Treasury that required no attention, and from 1688 to 1696 had written farces and skits for the Théâtre des italiens.

After inheriting his mother's considerable fortune in 1693, he has devoted the time divided between his hôtel in Paris and his country house, the château of Grillon, near Dourdan, to writing comedies in verse for the Comédie française, twenty-three in total, the best of them being Le Joueur ("The Gamester", 1696), Le Distrait (1697), Les Menechmes and his masterwork, Le Légataire universelle ("The residuary legatee", 1706), following closely in the steps of Molière.

He is admired by the poet and critic Boileau.