Émile Souvestre (Morlaix 1806 – Paris 1854), writer and journalist of Breton origin, gave many of his writings (such as L’échelle de Femmes, 1835; Les derniers Bretons, 1836; La Bretagne pittoresque, 1841; Le Foyer Breton, 1844) a Romantically Breton local colour. One of the few biographical sources about him (by his son-in-law) characterizes him as a “Romantic from his earliest childhood”, whose main boyhood delight was “gleaning from the peasantry of his native Brittany legends of the past, and recounting them – or, as often, fairy tales of his own invention – to a youthful audience”. Souvestre prided himself on his Celtic roots, reinforcing his credentials by claiming descent from 17th-century Irish refugees.

He studied law at Rennes, where he published his first poem in the Lycée armoricain, whose publisher, Camille Mellinet, was devoted to the vindication of the Breton language and character. He moved to Paris in 1827 in order to finish his law studies, and pursued his literary ambitions further with the unsuccessful tragedy The Siege of Missolonghi, which was censored for its revolutionary sentiment. He also became associated with the Liberal and Saint-Simonian journal Le Globe (1824-32), and with the Amis de l’Armorique, an exclusive Breton club. On his return to Brittany in 1828 he published his first major work in the Revue des Deux Mondes under the title of Les derniers paysans (1836). He became editor-in-chief of the local newspaper Finistère in 1832-33, pursuing a Saint-Simonian line, and initiated the new Revue de Bretagne in 1833. Back in Paris, he eventually broke with the Saint-Simonian movement under the influence of Michelet and turned to questions of social justice, as evinced in the romans-feuilleton Un philosophe sur les toits (1851) and Confessions d’un ouvrier (1852). He briefly sheltered the fugitive Edgar Quinet on his way to Brussels exile after the Bonapartist coup d’état of 1851; he himself spent 1853 lecturing in Geneva and other Swiss towns.