Théophile GautierTheophile Gautier was a French poet, playwright, novelist, journalist, and critic of literature and art who lived from 30 August 1811 to 23 October 1872. Gautier was a staunch supporter of Romanticism, although his work is difficult to categorize andcontinues to serve as a model for many later literary movements, including Parnassianism, Symbolism, Decadence, and Modernism. Numerous authors, including Balzac, Baudelaire, the Goncourt brothers, Flaubert, Pound, Eliot, James, Proust, and Wilde, held him in high regard. On August 30, 1811, Gautier was born in Tarbes, the county seat of the Hautes-Pyrénées département (southwestern France). His mother was Antoinette-Adelade Cocard, and his father was Jean-Pierre Gautier, a fairly sophisticated small government officer. In 1814, the family relocated to Paris, settling in the historic Marais neighborhood. Le Tombeau de Théophile Gautier, a collection of remembrance poetry published in 1873 by A. Lemerre, includes tributes by Anatole France, Victor Hugo, Algernon Swinburne, and many others. Gautier "was not a believer in religion or the supernatural," despite his fascination with "mystery, folklore, tradition, the picturesque and the creative," as well as the odd "excursion into the regions of the beyond." Read More Read Less