C.D. Warner, et al., comp.
The Library of the World’s Best Literature. An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.
Étienne Pivert de Senancour (1770–1846)
Sénancour, Étienne Pivert de (sen-ä
-kör’). A French writer of the school of Rousseau; born at Paris, 1770; died at St. Cloud, 1846. Under the direct influence of Rousseau he wrote: ‘Reveries on the Primitive State of Man’ (1799); his most notable work, ‘Obermann’ (2 vols., 1804), is in the same vein; then followed ‘Love according to Primordial Laws, and according to the Conventions of Society’ (2 vols., 1805); ‘Free Meditations of an Unknown Solitary on Detachment from the World’ (1819); ‘Sum of the traditions of Morality and Religion’ (2 vols., 1827), which brought on him legal prosecution for impiety; ‘Isabella,’ a novel (1833). (See Critical and Biographical Introduction).