FRERON, ELIE CATHERINE French critic and controversialist, is now remembered solely for his at tacks on Voltaire and the Encyclopaedists, and by the retaliation they provoked on the part of Voltaire, who, besides attacking him in epigrams, and even incidentally in some of his tragedies, di rected against him a virulent satire, Le Pauvre diable, and made him the principal personage in a comedy L'Ecossaise, in which the journal of Freron is designated L'Ane litteraire. A further attack on Freron entitled Anecdotes sur Freron . . . (1760), pub lished anonymously, is generally attributed to Voltaire.
Freron was the author of Ode sur la bataille de Fontenoy (1745) Histoire de Marie Stuart (1742, 2 vols.) ; and Histoire de l'empire d'Allemagne, (1771, 8 vols.). See Ch. Nisard, Les Ennemis de Voltaire (1853) ; Ch. Monselet, Freron, ou l'illustre critique (1864) ; Freron, sot vie, souvenirs, etc. (1876) ; F. Cornois, Elie Freron (1922).