Émile Souvestre

1806–1854 · Breton novelist & folklorist

Émile Souvestre was a Breton novelist from Morlaix. He did better as a novelist and as a collector of Breton folklore (Le Foyer breton, 1844) than as a playwright. Un Philosophe sous les toits won an academic prize in 1851. In 1848 he wrote an article on the Chouannerie for the Revue des deux mondes. It contains the earliest known “idea whose time has come.”

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“Nothing is more powerful than an idea whose time has come”

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