He belonged to a family whose members had for generations been lawyers, and he entered the corps of the kings musketeerss. He obtained a great vogue by his Réponse d'Abélard à Héloise, and followed up this first success with a number of heroic epistles, Les Victimes de lamour, ou lettres de quelques amants célébres (1776).
Dorat was possessed by an ambition quite out of proportion to his very mediocre ability. Besides light verse he wrote comedies, fables and, among other novels, Les Sacrifices de lamour, ou lettres de la vicomtesse de Senanges et du chevalier de Versenay (1771). He tried to cover his failures as a dramatist by buying up a great number of seats, and his books were lavishly illustrated by good artists and expensively produced, to secure their success.
He was maladroit enough to draw down on himself the hatred both of the philosophe party and of their arch-enemy Charles Palissot, and thus cut himself off from the possibility of academic honours. Le Tartufe littéraire (1774) attacked La Harpe and Palissot, and at the same time D'Alembert and Mlle de Lespinasse.
See G Desnoireterres, Le Chevalier Dorat et les potes legers au XVIII siècle (1887). For the bibliographical value of his works, see Henry Cohen, Guide de l'amateur de l'œvres a figures et vignettes du XVIII siècle (editions of Ch. Mehl, 1876, and R Portalis, 1887).
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