Antoine-Marin Lemierre

Antoine-Marin Lemierre was a French dramatist and poet.

Life

Lemierre was born in Paris to a poor family but secured patronage from the collector-general of taxes, Dupin, eventually becoming his secretary. Lemierre achieved his initial theatrical success with Hypermnestre ; Titre and Idomne failed on account of the subjects. Artaxerce, modelled on Metastasio, and Guillaume Tell were produced in 1766; other successful tragedies were La Veuve de Malabar and Barnavelt. He was admitted to the Académie française in 1780.
In 1786, Lemierre successfully revived Guillaume Tell to great acclaim. Following the French Revolution, Lemierre expressed profound remorse for having produced a play that promoted revolutionary ideals. It is widely believed that the trauma of witnessing the revolution's excesses contributed to his untimely death. Lemierre published La Peinture, based on a Latin poem by the abbé de Marsy, and a poem in six cantos. Les Fastes, ou les usages de lannie, an unsatisfactory imitation of Ovid's Fasti.
His Œuvres contain a notice of Lemierre by R. Perrin. and his Œuvres choisies contain one by F. Fayolle.