Jean Lorrain

He wrote under a borrowed name and made fin-de-siècle Paris look back at itself through a poisoned mirror. Jean Lorrain was born Paul-Alexandre-Martin Duval in Fécamp in 1855. As Jean Lorrain he became a novelist, poet, short-story writer, playwright, and literary chronicler. His books include Monsieur de Bougrelon, Histoires de masques, Le Vice errant, and Monsieur de Phocas; his work moves among salons, theatres, masks, jewels, illness, desire, cruelty, and the spectacle of a society fascinated by its own decline. He also wrote librettos and maintained a prolific public career under several names. He died in Paris in 1906. The scandal belonged to the newspapers. The afterimage belongs to the prose.