Huysmans was educated in Paris schools and received his Baccalaureate in 1866. He then worked as a civil servant with the Ministry of the Interior. In 1867, he published his first article in La Revue Mensuelle. He adopted the pseudonym of Joris-Karl, which is the Dutch equivalent of his forenames, in order to emphasize his ancestry. Huysmans first major work was a collection of prose poems, Le Drageoir a Epices, which appeared in 1874. In 1876, his first novel, Marthe, Histoire d'une Fille, was published and won critical acclaim. Over the next decade, Huysmans' work followed the Naturalist school, but in 1884 he finally broke with them with the publication of A Rebours (or Against the Grain), a decadent novel which caused a minor scandal at the time. In 1891, he introduced the character Durtal who would become a mainstay in a number of his novels. Huysmans was made a chevalier of the Legion of Honor in 1892 for his contributions to the civil service. In 1896, he became the president of Academe Goncourt and in 1898 he retired from the civil service. In 1907, he was promoted to officer in the Legion only a few short months before his death from cancer of the mouth. His other works include The Vatard Sisters (1879), Croquis Parisiens (1880), En Menage (1881), Modern Art (1883), Becalmed (1884), En Route (1895), The Cathedral (1898), The Oblate of St. Benedict (1903) and Les Foules de Lourdes (1905). |
