Valentin Conrart

CONRART, Valentin. b. Paris, 1603; d. Paris, 29 September 1675. Born into a Calvinist family which came originally from Valenciennes, Conrart became a student of literature, poet, grammarian, and man of letters. He and the friends who gathered at his house formed a group that was the nucleus of the Académie Française (1653/57). Conrart became its first ‘secrétaire perpétuel’. He published little original work (wisely, according to Boileau) but was a noted editor, preface-writer, and reviser. Among his best known work was a revision of 51 of the psalms of Clément Marot* and Théodore de Bèze*, published in Conrart’s Poésies chrétiennes et diverses: les Psaumes (1677), later Les Psaumes en...