Villiers de l’Isle-Adam, << vee lee AY duh LEEL ah DAH, >> Comte de (1838-1889), a French writer, was a leading figure in the Symbolist movement. Villiers became known for his short stories. Collections include Cruel Tales (1883) and New Cruel Tales (1888). Many of the stories emphasize supernatural, Gothic, or fantastic elements. Often, it is unclear whether what a character sees is real or a hallucination.
In Villiers’s novel The Future Eve (1885-1886), the main character is a fictionalized version of the American inventor Thomas A. Edison, whom the French greatly admired. In the novel, Edison creates a robot in the image of a beautiful woman who appears perfectly human. Villiers’s use of existing technology and his anticipation of future inventions makes The Future Eve a pioneer work of science fiction. Villiers’s other major work is the unfinished long poetic drama Axel. Villiers was born on Nov. 7, 1838, in St.-Brieuc, France. He spent most of his life living in extreme poverty in Paris. He died on Aug. 19, 1889.
