About the author

M. Xavier (1798–1865) was a nineteenth-century French writer; details of his life are scarce in publicly available sources, and the four works recorded under his name offer a rough picture of his writing. He is best known for Picciola, which tells of a prisoner who tends a small flower growing between stones in his cell, exploring solitude, hope and human redemption with delicate, morally edifying prose. He also wrote The Mythology of the Rhine and Myths of the Rhine, works that systematically gather the folklore and mythic traditions of the Rhine region, showing a sustained interest in European folk belief and antiquity. The Solitary of Juan Fernandez, or the Real Robinson Crusoe takes up the theme of survival on a desert island, echoing Defoe's Robinson Crusoe. His writing combines literary imagination with the popularization of knowledge, moving between travel, mythology and edifying fiction.

Written (4)

Publishers

Project Gutenberg