Paul et Virginie

"Paul and Virginia" redirects here. For the legal case, see Paul v. Virginia.

Paul et Virginie, 1844, by Henri Pierre Léon Pharamond Blanchard
Bernardin de Saint-Pierre memorial in the Jardin des Plantes, Paris; Paul and Virginie in the pedestal.

Paul et Virginie (sometimes known in English as Paul and Virginia) is a novel by Jacques-Henri Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, first published in 1788. The novel's title characters are friends since birth who fall in love. The story is set on the island of Mauritius under French rule, then named Île de France. Written on the eve of the French Revolution, the novel is recognized as perhaps Bernardin's finest work.[1] It records the fate of a child of nature corrupted by the artificial sentimentality of the French upper classes in the late eighteenth century. Bernardin de Saint-Pierre lived on the island for a time and based part of the novel on a shipwreck he witnessed there.[2]

  1. ^ "SPL".
  2. ^ "The First Idea of Paul and Virginia" (PDF). New York Times. 8 November 1874. Retrieved 23 June 2015. The New York Times article cites the British magazine Belgravia as its source.