Marie-Joseph Eugène Süe (the trema was dropped from the ‘u’ of the surname at the end of the nineteenth century) was born on 26 January 1804 into an illustrious family whose social standing could not be further removed from the poverty, misery and crime he would go on to portray so vividly in his most famous work,
Les Mystères de Paris. Sue’s godmother was Joséphine Bonaparte and his father Jean-Joseph Sue II was, like his father before him, a distinguished medic, and had been Surgeon-in-chief to the Imperial Guard during Napoleon’s Russian campaign in 1812. His father’s marriage to Marie-Sophie Derilly was his second and produced, as well as Eugène, a younger and much-adored sister, Victorine, born in 1810. The affluent Sue family had a country residence in Bouqueval, a…
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Citation: Wigelsworth, Amy Louise. "Eugène Sue". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 31 January 2011 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=4280, accessed 27 November 2024.]
