CHOIRY, FRANCOIS TIMOLEON, DE 1724), French author, was born in Paris on Aug. 16, 1644, and died in Paris on Oct. 2, I 7 24. His father was attached to the house hold of the duke of Orleans, and the lad became famous in court circles for his extravagance, his adoption of female dress and his numberless intrigues. He had been made an abbe in his childhood, and poverty drove him to live on his benefice at Sainte-Seine in Burgundy, where he found a kindred spirit in Bussy-Rabutin. He visited Rome in the suite of the cardinal de Bouillon in 1676, and shortly afterwards a serious illness brought about a sudden con version. In 1685 he accompanied the chevalier de Chaumont on a mission to Siam. He was ordained priest, and received various ecclesiastical preferments. He wrote voluminous historical works, but is remembered by his gossiping Memoires (1737), which con tain remarkably exact portraits of his contemporaries, although he has otherwise small pretensions to historical accuracy.
The Memoires passed through many editions, and were edited in i888 by M. de Lescure. Some admirable letters of Choisy are in cluded in the correspondence of Bussy-Rabutin. Choisy is said to have burnt some of his indiscreet revelations, but left a considerable quantity of unpublished ms. Part of this material, giving an account of his adventures as a woman, was surreptitiously used in an anony mous Histoire de madame la comtesse de Barres (Antwerp, , and again with much editing in the Vie de M. l'abbe de Choisy (Lausanne and Geneva, 1742) , ascribed by Paul Lacroix to Lenglet Duf resnoy ; the text was finally edited (187o) by Lacroix as Aventures de l'abbe de Choisy. See also Sainte-Beuve, Causeries du lundi, vol. iii.