Gérard de Nerval, a pseudonym of Gérard Labrunie, was born in Paris on May 22, 1808 to Étienne Labrunie, a military doctor who served with Napoleon’s Rhine army, and to Marie Antoinette-Marguerite Laurent. On November 29, 1810, when Nerval was only two years old, his mother, age twenty-five, died of a fever in Silesia. The premature death of his mother left him with a deep feeling of emptiness, which he would then express in several of his creative works. Nerval was raised in Mortefontaine, Valois, by his great-uncle, Antoine Boucher, whose property
le clos de Nervalinspired his great-nephew’s pseudonym. Upon his father’s return from the Napoleonic wars in 1814, he moved to Paris and studied at the Lycée Charlemagne, where he met his lifelong friend Théophile Gautier, a future…
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Citation: Whitaker, Jena. "Gérard de Nerval". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 27 July 2015 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=3322, accessed 23 November 2024.]
