Antoine Garaby de La Luzerne

Who was Antoine Garaby de La Luzerne?

Antoine de Garaby, sieur de Pierrepont, de La Luzerne et d'Étienville was a French moralist.

Garaby de La Luzerne was born in the family manor of La Besnardière at Montchaton near Coutances. He was the son of Bernard de Garaby and Françoise de Pierrepont, the sister of Hervé de Pierrepont, commander of the city and fortress of Granville for the king. Although diminutive, unattractive and malformed, his keen intelligence, amenities, and the subtleties of his mind, nonetheless made him an attractive character for nature had endowed him with the qualities of mind and heart while denying him physical beauty.

Garaby received his early education at home, under Francis Dyens, to whose memory he dedicated two couplets and a few lines of Latin prose. He then went on to study eloquence at the University of Caen, under Professor Antoine Halley with whom he was to remain in friendly terms until the end of his life. Amongst his classmates were, the theologian, orator, poet and humanist, Guillaume Marcel and Georges de Brébeuf, the translator into French of Lucan's Pharsalia.

Graced with a keen taste for literature, he started to compose, soon after finishing his classical studies.