FABRE, FERDINAND (183o-1898), French novelist, was born at Bedarieux, in Herault, a very picturesque district of the south of France, which he made completely his own in literature. He was brought up by his uncle, the Abbe Fulcran Fabre, at Camplong among the mulberry woods. Of his childhood and early youth he has given a charming account in Ma Vocation (1889) . He was sent to the seminary of St. Pons de Thomieres, where, in 1848, he had, as he believed, a vision in which he was warned not to become a priest. He was then articled as a lawyer's clerk in Paris. In 1853 he published a volume of verses, Feuilles de lierre, broke down in health, and returned to his old home at Bedarieux. After some eight or nine years he reappeared in Paris, with the ms. of his earliest novel, Les Courbezon (1862), in which he treated the daily business of country priests in the Cevennes. George Sand praised it, Sainte-Beuve hailed in its author "the strongest of the disciples of Balzac," and it was crowned by the French Academy. Fabre wrote about 20 novels. His masterpiece was L'Abbe Tigrane, candidat a la papaute (1873), a very power ful picture of unscrupulous priestly ambition. Others are : Mon Oncle Celestin (1881), a study of the entirely single and tender hearted country abbe; and Lucifer (1884), a marvellous gallery of serious clerical portraits.
In 1883 Fabre was appointed curator of the Mazarin library, with rooms in the Institute, where on Feb. 11, 1898, he died after a brief attack of pneumonia. Ferdinand Fabre was a "regional" novelist, dealing almost exclusively with the population of the mountain villages of Herault, and particularly with its priests. See J. Lemaitre, Les Contemporains vol. ii. ; G. Pellissier, Etudes de litterature contemporaine (1898) ; E. W. Gosse, French Profiles 0905).