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13-425: Louis-Henri Murger (27 March 1822 – 28 January 1861), also known as Henri Murger and Henry Murger , was a French novelist and poet. He is chiefly distinguished as the author of the 1847-1849 book Scènes de la vie de bohème ( Scenes of Bohemian Life ), which is based on his own experiences as a desperately poor writer living in a Parisian garret (the top floor of buildings, where artists often lived) and as

26-604: A "y" in imitation of the English name, an affectation he continued for the rest of his career. A third story followed in July, with the subtitle "Scènes de la bohème". The same subtitle was used with 18 more stories, which continued to appear on a semi-regular basis until early 1849 (with a long break in 1848 for the revolution in Paris). Although the stories were popular within the small literary community, they initially failed to reach

39-471: A Paris hospital. Napoleon III 's minister Count Walewski sent 500 francs to help pay his medical expenses, but it was too late. Henri Murger died on 28 January 1861 at the age of 38. The French government paid for his funeral, which from contemporary accounts in Le Figaro was a great public occasion attended by 250 luminaries from journalism, literature, theatre, and the arts. Le Figaro also started

52-737: A fund to raise money for his monument. Hundreds of people contributed and within two months it had raised over 6500 francs. Early in his career, in an effort to make himself appear more "elegant and noticeable", Murger signed his name as "Henry Mürger", the English-looking "y" and German-looking umlaut both being exotic in French. - though the spelling of Henry rather than Henri was also archaic French, having been standard orthography (along with such spellings as loy and roy) prior to c. 1775 and not totally supplanted by "i" until after 1790. After experimenting with other variations he eventually kept

65-475: A larger audience or generate much income for Murger. This changed in 1849, after Murger was approached by Théodore Barrière , an up-and-coming young playwright, who proposed writing a play based on the stories. Murger agreed to the collaboration, and the result – titled La Vie de la bohème , credited to Barrière and Murger as co-authors – was staged to great success at the Théâtre des Variétés. The popularity of

78-415: A living he wrote whatever he could find a market for, turning out prose as he put it, "at the rate of eighty francs an acre". At one point he edited a fashion newspaper, Le Moniteur de la Mode , and a paper for the millinery trade, Le Castor . His position gradually improved when the French writer Champfleury , with whom he lived for a time, urged Murger to devote himself to fiction. His first big success

91-432: A member of a loose club of friends who called themselves "the water drinkers" (because they were too poor to afford wine). In his writing he combines instinct with pathos, humour, and sadness. The book is the basis for the 1896 opera La bohème by Puccini , Leoncavallo 's opera of the same name , and, at greater removes, Amadeu Vives ' zarzuela Bohemios , Kálmán 's 1930 operetta Das Veilchen vom Montmartre , and

104-470: A variety of menial jobs before securing one in a lawyer's office. While there he also wrote poetry which came to the attention of the French writer Étienne de Jouy . De Jouy's connections enabled him to secure the position of secretary to Count Tolstoi, a Russian nobleman living in Paris. Murger's literary career began about 1841. His first essays were mainly literary and poetic, but under the pressure of earning

117-572: The 1996 Broadway musical Rent . He wrote lyrics as well as novels and stories, the chief being La Chanson de Musette  – "a tear", says Gautier , "which has become a pearl of poetry". Murger was born and died in Paris . He was the son of a Savoyard immigrant who worked as a tailor and janitor for an apartment building in the Rue Saint Georges. He had a scanty and fragmented education. After leaving school at 15 he worked in

130-525: The bohemian life. This became the novel, published in January 1851. A second edition was published later in the year, in which Murger added one more story. The late nineteenth century English novelist George Gissing claimed in 1890 to be reading the novel, in French, for the 'twentieth time'. Two operas were later based on the novel and play, La bohème by Giacomo Puccini in 1896 and La bohème by Ruggero Leoncavallo in 1897. Puccini's became one of

143-546: The former but dropped the latter, so that all of his best-known works were published under the name "Henry Murger". In English translation Bibliography Sc%C3%A8nes de la vie de boh%C3%A8me The first of these stories was published in March 1845, carrying the byline "Henri Mu..ez". A second story followed more than a year later, in May 1846. This time Murger signed his name "Henry Murger", spelling his first name with

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156-413: The play created a demand for publication of the stories. Murger therefore compiled most of the stories into a single collection. To help establish continuity, he added some new material. A preface discussed the meaning of "bohemian", and a new first chapter served to introduce the setting and the main characters. To the end were added two more chapters which wrap up some loose ends and offer final thoughts on

169-469: Was Scènes de la vie de bohème . In 1851 Murger published a sequel, Scènes de la vie de jeunesse . Several more works followed, but none of them brought him the same popular acclaim. He lived much of the next ten years in a country house outside Paris, dogged by financial problems and recurrent ill health. In 1859 he received the Légion d'honneur but within two years he was almost penniless and dying in

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