Auguste Villiers de l'Isle-Adam

Villiers de l'Isle-Adam (1838 - 1889) 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 Axël (1890), the novel The Future 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, and the origin of the short story genre conte cruel. The Future Eve greatly helped to popularize the term "android" (Androïde in French, the character is named "Andréide"). Villiers believed the imagination has within it much more beauty than reality itself, existing at a level in which nothing real could compare. [Wikipedia]