Jules Lemaître

Lemaître, Jules (1853–1914), French writer and influential theatre critic. His collection of stories Contes blancs (White Tales, 1900) includes several fairy tales, such as ‘Les Amoureux de la princesse Mimi’ (‘Princess Mimi's Suitors’), in which Little Tom Thumb and the cyclops Polyphemus compete for the hand of Cinderella's daughter, the eponymous Mimi. The young narrator of ‘Les Idées de Liette’ (‘Lietta's Ideas’) protests at the unjust endings of some classic fairy tales. In her imaginative revisions of ‘Little Red Riding Hood’ and ‘Bluebeard’, the Virgin Mary and Jesus intervene on behalf of the persecuted heroines.

— Adrienne E. Zuerner

Lemaître, Jules (1853-1914). French critic and playwright, who gave up teaching to devote himself to writing. His journalistic essays, grouped in two collections, Les Contemporains (10 vols., 1885-1924) and Impressions de théâtre (11 vols., 1888-1920), are avowedly impressionistic and personal (‘des impressions sincères, notées avec soin’), but open-minded and often witty and stimulating. In later years he adopted the right-wing positions of Action Française.

[Peter France]