Jean François de Saint-Lambert facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Jean François de Saint-Lambert
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| Born | 26 December 1716 |
| Died | 9 February 1803 (aged 86) |
| Title | Marquis de Saint-Lambert |
| Partner(s) | Émilie du Châtelet Sophie d'Houdetot |
| Children | Stanislas-Adélaïde du Châtelet (4 September 1749 — 6 May 1751) |
Jean François de Saint-Lambert (French: [ʒɑ̃ fʁɑ̃swa də sɛ̃ lɑ̃bɛʁ]; 26 December 1716 – 9 February 1803) was a French poet, philosopher and military officer.
Biography
Saint-Lambert was born at Nancy and raised on his parents' estate at Affracourt, a village in Lorraine near Haroué, a seat of the Beauvau family, with whom he had close ties. He studied at the university at Pont-à-Mousson, but then spent several years at home recovering from an unidentified illness. He often complained of poor health, but participated in military campaigns, led a strenuous social life, and lived to be 86 years old.
Saint-Lambert began writing poetry in his adolescence and belonged to Françoise de Graffigny's social circle in Lunéville. By October 1733 he had already begun work on The Seasons, his major poetical work, which did not appear in print until 1769 (see 1769 in poetry). All his life, he read his works in salons and to his friends, but did not rush to publish them.
In 1739, Saint-Lambert joined the Heudicourt regiment in the Lorraine Guards, in which his boyhood friend, Charles-Just, prince de Beauvau-Craon, was already a colonel, despite being only 19 years old. For much of the 1740s the two men fought side by side in the Italian campaigns of the War of the Austrian Succession.
Saint-Lambert moved to Paris around 1750. It was at this time that he gave himself the title Marquis de Saint-Lambert, to which he had no right; it was once claimed that he was not even of noble birth, but the evidence refuting that charge was published long ago.
Saint-Lambert resigned from the army in 1758 and devoted the rest of his life to literature. He wrote several articles for Diderot's Encyclopédie, published an essay on "Luxury" in 1764, brought out an edition of The Seasons with a selection of his other poetry and some short stories in 1769, and completed a multi-volume philosophical work in 1797–98, called Principe des mœurs chez toutes les nations ou Catéchisme universel (Principle of morals among all nations, or universal catechism). He wrote the section on "Siam", and most likely also other parts of the first edition of Guillaume Thomas François Raynals L'Histoire philosophique et politique des établissements et du commerce des Européens dans les deux Indes. He was elected to the Académie française in 1770.
