Auguste Villiers de l'Isle-Adam (1838 - 1889)

Jean-Marie-Mathias-Philippe-Auguste, comte de Villiers de l'Isle-Adam was a French symbolist writer. Villiers' works, in the romantic style, are often fantastic in plot and filled with mystery and horror. Important among them are the drama Axel (1890), the novel L'Ève future ("Tomorrow's Eve") (1886), and the short-story collection, Contes cruels (1883, tr. Sardonic Tales, 1927). Contes cruels is regarded as an important collection of horror stories. Villiers believed the imagination has within it much more beauty than reality itself, existing at a level in which nothing real could compare