Joseph Henry Rosny

Who is Joseph Henry Rosny?

Joseph Henry Rosny, a pseudonym covering the collaboration of the French novelists, Joseph Henri Honor Box, born at Brussels in 1856, and his brother Séraphin Justin Francois Box, born at Brussels in 1859. The novels of J. H. Rosny are full of scientific knowledge, of astronomy, anthropology, zoology and, above all, sociology. The stories are approached from the point of view of society rather than of the individual, but the characters, strongly individualized and intensely real, are only incidentally typical. The elder Rosny was the sole author of the earlier novels, and began novelwriting as an avowed disciple of Zola. Nell Horn, membre de l'armée du salut is a picture of London life and social reform; Le Bilateral and Marc Fane describe the revolutionary and anarchist parties of Paris; L'Immolation is a brutal story of peasant life; Le Termite is a picture of literary life in Paris; and Vamireh, with Erymah, and Les Profondeurs de Kyamo and others deal with prehistoric man. MM. Rosny were among the writers who in 1887 entered a formal protest in the Figaro against Zola's La Terre, and they were designated by Edmond de Goncourt as original members of his academy. Among their later novels the more famous are: Daniel Valgraive, a study in the possibilities of personal sacrifice; L'Imperieuse Bonte, an indictment of Parisian charity; L'Indomptée, the history of a female medical student in Paris; Le Serment; Les Ames perdues, another anarchist novel; La Charpente; Thérèse Degaudy; Le Crime du docteur; Le Docteur Harambur; Le Millionaire; and Sous le fardeau.