Barbey D'Aurevilly

Jules-Amédée Barbey d'Aurevilly was a novelist and literary critic at the Bonapartist paper Le Pays who was influential among fin-de-siècle decadents.

He specialised in mystery tales that explored hidden motivation and hinted at evil without being explicitly concerned with anything supernatural. He had a decisive influence on writers such as Auguste Villiers de l'Isle-Adam, Henry James and Marcel Proust.