[Henri François Joseph]. French poet, born at Honfleur (Calvados) on the 28th of December 1864, and educated in Paris for the law. In 1885 he began to contribute to the Parisian reviews, and his verses found their way into most of the French and Belgian periodicals favourable to the symbolist writers. Having begun, however, to write under the leadership of the Parnassians, he retained the classical tradition, though he adopted some of the innovations of Moréas and Gustave Kahn. His gorgeous and vaguely suggestive style shows the influence of Stéphane Mallarmé, of whom he was an assiduous disciple. His first volume of poems, Lendemains, appeared in 1885, and among numerous later volumes are Poèmes anciens et romanesques (1890), Les Jeux rustiques et divins (1890), Les Médailles d’argent (1900), La Cité des eaux (1903). He is also the author of a series of realistic novels and tales, among which are La Canne de jaspe (2nd ed., 1897), La Double Maîtresse (5th ed., 1900), Les Vacances d’un jeune homme sage (1904), and Les Amants singuliers (1905). M. de Régnier married Mlle. Marie de Hérédia, daughter of the poet, and herself a novelist and poet under the name of Gérard d’Houville.
See E. Gosse, French Profiles (1905), and Poètes d’aujourd’hui (6th ed., 1905), by van Bever and Léautaud. See also “The Faun with the Mirror,” “The Vase” and “Odelette I.”
