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{{Short description|French writer and botanist (1737–1814)}}
{{Infobox writer
| name = Jacques-Henri Bernardin de Saint-Pierre
| image = Jacques-Henri Bernardin de Saint-Pierre (81810684).jpg
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| pen_name =
| birth_name = Jacques-Henri Bernardin de Saint-Pierre
| birth_date = {{Birth date|1737|1|19|df=y}}
| birth_place = [[Le Havre]], [[Normandy]], [[Kingdom of France]]
| death_date = {{Death date and age|1814|1|21|1737|1|19|df=y}}
| death_place = [[Éragny, Val-d'Oise|Éragny]], [[Seine-et-Oise]], France
| occupation = Writer
| ethnicity =
| citizenship =
| education =
| period = 18th century
| genre = Novel, travel narrative
| subject =
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| notable_works = ''Paul et Virginie''
| spouse =
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| children =
| relatives = [[Catherine Dorothée de Saint-Pierre]] (sister)
| influences =
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}}
'''Jacques-Henri Bernardin de Saint-Pierre''' ({{IPA|fr|ʒak ɑ̃ʁi bɛʁnaʁdɛ̃ də sɛ̃ pjɛʁ|pron}}; also called '''Bernardin de St. Pierre''') (19 January 1737, in [[Le Havre]] – 21 January 1814, in [[Éragny, Val-d'Oise|Éragny]], [[Val-d'Oise]]) was a French writer and [[botanist]]. He is best known for his 1788 novel, ''[[Paul et Virginie]]'', a very popular 18th-century classic of [[French literature]].<ref name=":0">{{Cite web|title=Jacques-Henri Bernardin de Saint-Pierre {{!}} French writer|url=https://www.britannica.com/biography/Jacques-Henri-Bernardin-de-Saint-Pierre|access-date=2021-06-26|website=Encyclopedia Britannica|language=en}}</ref>

==Biography==
Jacques-Henri Bernardin de Saint-Pierre's younger sister was [[Catherine Dorothée de Saint-Pierre]].<ref name="g329">{{cite journal |last1=Astbury |first1=Katherine |last2=Seth |first2=Catriona |title=Unblocking Enlightenment Loos, Bernardin's Boxer Shorts and Other Day-to-Day Practicalities in Eighteenth-Century Normandy: A Whistle-Stop Tour of Catherine de Saint-Pierre's Networks |journal=Nottingham French Studies |volume=54 |issue=2 |date=2015 |issn=0029-4586 |doi=10.3366/nfs.2015.0120 |pages=210–223 |url=https://www.euppublishing.com/doi/10.3366/nfs.2015.0120 |access-date=15 June 2026|url-access=subscription }}</ref> At the age of twelve he had read ''[[Robinson Crusoe]]'' and went with his uncle, a skipper, to the West-Indies. After returning from this trip he was educated as an engineer at the [[École des ponts ParisTech|École des Ponts]]. Then he joined the French Army and was involved in the [[Seven Years' War]] against Prussia and England, but was dismissed for insubordination. After travels around Europe he returned to Paris in 1765.<ref name="EB1911">{{EB1911|inline=y|wstitle=Saint-Pierre, Jacques Henri Bernardin de|volume=24|page=41}}</ref>

He received a small inheritance on his father's death,<ref name="EB1911"/> and in 1768 he traveled to [[Mauritius]] where he served as engineer and studied plants.<ref name=":0" /> On his return in 1771 he became friendly with and a pupil of [[Jean-Jacques Rousseau]]. Together they studied the plants in and around Paris, and Rousseau helped form his character and style.<ref name="EB1911"/>

His ''Voyage à l'Île de France'' (2 vols., 1773) gained him a reputation as a champion of innocence and religion, and in consequence, through the exertions of the [[Jean de Dieu-Raymond de Cucé de Boisgelin|bishop of Aix]], a pension of 1000 livres a year. The ''Études de la nature'' (3 vols., 1784) was an attempt to prove the existence of God from the wonders of nature; he set up a philosophy of sentiment to oppose the materializing tendencies of the [[Encyclopédistes|Encyclopaedists]]. His masterpiece, ''Paul et Virginie'', appeared in 1789 in a supplementary volume of the ''Études'', and his second great success, less sentimental and showing some humour, the ''Chaumière indienne'', not until 1790.<ref name="EB1911"/>

In 1795 he was elected to the [[Institut de France]],<ref name="EB1911"/>in 1797 became manager of the [[Jardin des Plantes|Botanical Gardens]] (Jardin des plantes) in Paris and in 1803 was elected a member of the [[Académie française]].
{{French literature sidebar}}

Saint-Pierre was an avid advocate and practitioner of [[vegetarianism]], and although he was a devout Christian was also heavily influenced by [[Age of Enlightenment|Enlightenment-era]] intellectuals like [[Voltaire]] and his mentor [[Jean-Jacques Rousseau|Rousseau]].<ref>Tristram Stuart, ''The Bloodless Revolution'', W. W. Norton & Company, 2006, p. 212.</ref><ref>[[Rod Preece]], ''Sins of the Flesh: A History of Ethical Vegetarian Thought'', UBC Press, 2008, p. 224.</ref>

In 1792 he married a very young girl, Félicité Didot, who brought him a considerable [[dowry]]. After his first wife's death he married in 1800, when he was sixty-three, another young girl, Desirée Pelleport.<ref name="EB1911"/>

==Legacy==
:"Barye's predators devouring their living prey indulge the emotions in a Romantic way of course, but they also embody a romantically [[moralizing]] point of view like those held by Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, [[Anne Louise Germaine de Staël|Mme de Staël]], and [[Victor Hugo]]. The ''Oeuvres complètes'' of Bernardin de Saint-Pierre appeared in [[Paris]] in 1834 and was surely known to Barye, for the author was the former director of the [[zoo]] in the [[Jardin des Plantes]] and one of the "masters of genuine poetry" for the [[romanticism|arch-romantic]] Mme de Staël. Bernardin de Saint-Pierre maintained that a [[carnivorous]] animal in devouring its [[prey]] alive committed a sin against the laws of its own nature."<ref>From ''[[Antoine-Louis Barye]]: [[Sculpture|Sculptor]] of [[romanticism|Romantic]] [[Realism (arts)|Realism]]'' by Glenn F. Benge, p. 8:</ref>
[[File:Monument to Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, Jardin des plantes, Paris.jpg|thumb|Monument to Bernardin de Saint-Pierre at the [[Jardin des plantes]] in [[Paris]].]]
[[Alexander von Humboldt]], next to [[Charles Darwin]] the best known naturalist of the nineteenth century, belonged to the admirers of Bernardin de Saint-Pierre and cherished the novel ''Paul et Virginie''.<ref>{{ cite book | last=Daum | first=Andreas W.|author-link=Andreas Daum | year=2024 | title=Alexander von Humboldt: A Concise Biography | location=Trans. Robert Savage. Princeton, N.J. | publisher=Princeton University Press |pages=45 | isbn=978-0-691-24736-6 }}</ref>

==Works==
*''Voyage à l’Île de France, à l’île Bourbon et au cap de Bonne-Espérance'' (1773)
*''L’Arcadie'' (1781)
*''Études de la nature'' (1784)
*''[[Paul et Virginie]]'' (1788)
*''La Chaumière indienne'' (1790)
*''Le Café de Surate'' (1790)
*''Les Vœux d’un solitaire'' (1790)
*''De la nature de la morale'' (1798)
*''Voyage en Silésie'' (1807)
*''La Mort de Socrate'' (1808)
*''Harmonies de la nature'' (1815)

[[File:Bernardin de Saint-Pierre-Etinne Frédéric Lignon mg 8550.jpg|thumb]]

==See also==
*[[Society of the Friends of Truth]]

==References==
{{reflist}}

== External links ==
{{Wikisource author|wislink=Jacques-Henri Bernardin de Saint-Pierre|works=or}}
{{wikiquote}}
* {{Gutenberg author |id=825}}
* {{Internet Archive author |sname=Bernardin de St. Pierre}}
* {{Librivox author |id=5318}}
* [https://www.ivu.org/history/williams/stpierre.html International Vegetarian Union,"The Ethics of Diet": Jacques-Henri Bernardin de Saint-Pierre]
{{commons category|Jacques-Henri Bernardin de Saint-Pierre}}
{{Académie française Seat 27}}
{{People in veganism and vegetarianism}}
{{Authority control}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, Jacques-Henri}}
[[Category:1737 births]]
[[Category:1814 deaths]]
[[Category:18th-century French botanists]]
[[Category:18th-century French novelists]]
[[Category:18th-century French male novelists]]
[[Category:19th-century French botanists]]
[[Category:19th-century French writers]]
[[Category:19th-century French male writers]]
[[Category:Burials at Père Lachaise Cemetery]]
[[Category:Corps des ponts]]
[[Category:École des Ponts ParisTech alumni]]
[[Category:French children's writers]]
[[Category:French vegetarianism activists]]
[[Category:Lycée Pierre-Corneille alumni]]
[[Category:Members of the Académie Française]]
[[Category:Writers from Le Havre]]
[[Category:Scientists from Le Havre]]
[[Category:Writers from the Province of Normandy]]

Jacques-Henri Bernardin de Saint-Pierre - Revision history

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