Petrus Borel

Who was Petrus Borel?

Petrus Borel was a French writer of the Romantic movement.

Born Joseph-Pierre Borel dHauterive at Lyon, the twelfth of fourteen children of an ironmonger, he studied architecture in Paris but abandoned it for literature. Nicknamed le Lycanthrope, and the center of the circle of Bohemians in Paris, he was noted for extravagant and eccentric writing, foreshadowing Surrealism. He was not commercially successful though, and eventually was found a minor civil service post by his friends, including Théophile Gautier. He's also considered as a Poète maudit, like Aloysius Bertrand, or Alice de Chambrier.

He died at Mostaganem in Algeria.

He was the subject of a biography by Enid Starkie, Petrus Borel: The Lycanthrope .