Jean-Baptiste Louvet de Couvray (; 12 June 1760 – 25 August 1797) was a French novelist, playwright and journalist.
Life
Early life and literary works
Louvet was born in Paris as the son of a stationer and became a bookseller's clerk. He first attracted attention with the first part of his novel Les Amours du Chevalier de Faublas (Paris, 1787; English translation illustrated by etchings by Louis Monzies in 1898), followed in 1788 by Six semaines de la vie du chevalier de Faublas and in 1790 by La Fin des amours du chevalier de Faublas. The heroine, Lodoiska, was based on the wife of a jeweller in the Palais Royal, with whom Louvet had an affair. His second novel, Émilie de Varmont (1791), was intended to prove the utility and necessity of divorce and of the marriage of priests, questions raised by the French Revolution; all his works tended to advocate revolutionary ideals.
He attempted to have one of his unpublished plays, L'Anoblié conspirateur, performed at the Comédie-Française, and records that one of its managers, d'Orfeuil, listened to the reading of the first three acts impatiently, exclaiming at last: "I should need cannon in order to put that piece on the stage". A sort of farce at the expense of the army of the Royalist émigrés, La Grande Revue des armes noire et blanche, had, however, better success: it was on stage for twenty-five nights.
R. Scurr considered that Robespierre was taken by surprise by the accusations while the writer of the Britannica article on Louvet considered Louvet's words along with his claims that Robespierre was a “royalist,” Marat “the principal agent of England,” the Montagnards Orleanists in masquerade to have beenn "ill-balanced invective contributed to their [the Girondist leaders] ruin and his own". Commenting on the control that Robespierre ensured in Paris 1792 French National Convention election in which many candidates were disqualified Louvet said "Almost always at the moment despotism is overthrown agitateurs appear formenting anarchy to oppress and tyranize in their turn".
His courageous attitude at the king's trial, when he supported the appeal to the people over the outright death penalty,