David A. Bell writes:

The purest example of the 18th century European parvenu was undoubtedly Pierre-Augustin Caron, better known as Beaumarchais. Born the son of a bourgeois watchmaker in 1732, he became a familiar figure at the French court while still in his early twenties, after which his life comprised an almost entirely uninterrupted series of scandals and lawsuits. He served as a secret French agent across Europe, notably helping to arrange clandestine shipments of weapons to the American revolutionaries before France had formally taken their side. He is best known for two witty plays that have long formed part of the French canon: The Barber of Seville and its sequel, The Marriage of Figaro, featuring the classic Spanish trickster of the titles. Beaumarchais has inspired scores of biographies, including Maurice Lever’s exhaustive three-volume work, which his widow, along with the translator Susan Emanuel, has now boiled down to a much more manageable size.

(LRB 22 October 2009)

Farrar, Straus | hardback 411 pp. |ISBN: 9780374113285