SOURCE: An introduction to The Wayward Head and Heart by Claude Prosper Jolyot de Crébillon, translated by Barbara Bray, 1963. Reprint by Greenwood Press, Inc., 1978, pp. vii–xiv.

Heppenstall was an English novelist, critic, and autobiographer who wrote extensively of his experiences with such literary figures as George Orwell and Dylan Thomas. In the following excerpt from an essay first published in 1963, he gives an overview of Crébillon's works.

In the course of our general reading we somehow contrive to pick up the name of Crébillon fils. It may be from Antic Hay, or it may be from the letters of Horace Walpole. Claude-Prosper Jolyot de Crébillon, son of Prosper Jolyot, Sieur de Crébillon, was, we gather, a witty but licentious minor French novelist of the eighteenth century. As to Crébillon père, it is understood that he wrote unreadable classical tragedies, which...