CREBILLON, PROSPER JOLYOT DE French tragic poet, was born at Dijon, where his father, Melchior Jolyot, was notary-royal. In 1705 he produced Idomenee; in 1707 his Atree et Thyeste was repeatedly acted at court; Electre appeared in 1709; and in 1711 he produced his finest play, the Rhadamiste et Zenobie, which held the stage for a long period, although the plot is so complicated as to be almost incompre hensible. But his Xerxes (1714) was only once played, and his Semiramis (I 71 7) was an absolute failure. In 1707 Crebillon mar ried a girl without fortune, who died leaving him two young chil dren. Oppressed with melancholy, he removed to a garret, where he surrounded himself with a number of dogs, cats and ravens, which he had befriended ; he became utterly careless of cleanliness or food, and solaced himself with constant smoking. But in 1731, in spite of his long seclusion, he was elected member of the French Academy; in he was appointed royal censor; and in Mme. de Pompadour presented him with a pension of I,000 francs and a post in the royal library. He returned to the stage in 1726 with a successful play, Pyrrhus; in 1748 his Catilina was played with great success before the court; and in 1754, when he was 8o years old, appeared his last tragedy, Le Triumvirat. The enemies of Voltaire maintained that Crebillon was his superior as a tragic poet, and Voltaire then took subjects of no less than five of Crebillon's tragedies—Semiramis, Electre, Catilina, Le Trium virat, Atree—as subjects for tragedies of his own. The so-called Eloge de Crebillon (1762), really a depreciation, which appeared in the year of the poet's death, is generally attributed to Voltaire, though he strenuously denied the authorship.
There are numerous editions of Crebillon's works, among which may be noticed: Oeuvres (1772) with preface and "eloge" by Joseph de la Porte; Oeuvres (1828) , containing D'Alembert's Eloge de Crebillon (1775); and Theatre complet (1885) with a notice by Auguste Vitu. A complete bibliography is given by Maurice Dutrait, in his Etude sur la vie et le theatre de Crebillon (1895).
His only son, CLAUDE PROSPER JOLYOT CREBILLON (1707— 1777), French novelist, was born in Paris, where his life was almost entirely spent, but the publication of L'Ecumoire, ou Tanzai et Neadarne histoire japonaise (1734), which contained veiled attacks on the bull Unigenitus, the cardinal de Rohan and the duchesse du Maine, led to imprisonment, followed by five years' exile in the provinces. With Alexis Piron and Charles Colle he founded in 1752 the gay society which met regularly to dine at the famous "Caveau," where many good stories were elabo rated. From 1759 onwards he was to be found at the Wednesday dinners of the Pelletier, at which Garrick, Sterne and Wilkes were sometimes guests. He married in 1748 an English lady of noble family, Lady Henrietta Maria Stafford, who had been his mistress from 1744. The most celebrated of his numerous novels are: Les Amours de Zeokinizul, roi des Kofirans (1740), in which "Zeokinizul" may be translated Louis XIV., and Le Sopha, Conte moral (1740), where the moral is supplied in the title only.
His Oeuvres Completes were collected and printed in 1772. See a notice of Crebillov prefixed to O. Uzanne's edition of his Contes dialogues in the series of Conteurs du XV111e siecle.