SOURCE: "Barbey d'Aurevilly: A French Disciple of Walter Scott," in The North American Review, Vol. 192, No. 3, September, 1910, pp. 473-85.

An author, translator, and editor, Bradley was the most successful American literary agent in Paris during the 1920s and 1930s. He represented, at various times, such American authors as John Dos Passos, Claude McKay, Henry Miller, Katherine Anne Porter, Ezra Pound, Edith Wharton, and Thornton Wilder, and passionately championed French literature in America. In the following excerpt, Bradley offers a positive general assessment of Barbey's fiction.

Barbey d'Aurevilly is one of the most original figures of the nineteenth century. It is probable that he will long excite curiosity, that he will long remain one of those singular and, as it were, subterranean writers, who are the veritable life of French literature. Their altar is at the bottom of a crypt, but the faithful descend to it willingly, while the...