La Fontaine, Jean de |
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BORN 8 Jul 1621, Château-Thierry, Champagne - DIED 14 Apr 1695, Neuilly-sur-Seine, Hauts-de-Seine GRAVE LOCATION Paris: Père Lachaise, Rue du Repos 16 (division 25, chemin Molière et La Fontaine, ligne 01 (cenotaph) (Moiroux: P-24)) |
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Jean de la Fontaine is famous for his fables. In 1647 he married the fourteen year old Marie Héricart and this marriage brought him 20,000 livres. He was mostly away from home, but in 1653 they had a son. He studied law and practised as a lawyer for a while. Helped by protectors, he was enable to spend all his time on literature. His fables were published in three volumes, in 1668, 1678 and 1694. After a long time of being under suspicion and hesitation from the King, he was welcomed to the French Academy during the 1680s. since then his fame never disappeared. He died in 1695 in Neuilly-sur-Seine and was buried at the Holy Innocents’ Cemetery near his Paris church Saint-Eustache. To promote the relatively new Père Lachaise cemetery his presumed remains were transferred to that cemetery. But in 1792 it was presumed falsely that he was buried next to Molière and the bones of an unknown known were transferred instead. Almost certainly La Fontaine's bones were transferred to the Paris Catacombs when the Holy Innocents’ Cemetery was removed. Related persons • had work illustrated by Mercuri, Paolo |
| Images |
 The grave of Jean de la Fontaine at Père Lachaise, Paris. Picture by Androom (24 Oct 2014) |
Sources • Jean de La Fontaine - Wikipedia (EN) • The Curious Case of Molière and La Fontaine’s Graves at Père Lachaise - The Parisian Guide |
