He was born at La Roche sur Yon, and educated at the normal school in Paris. After teaching for some time in La Rochelle and Bordeaux, he returned to Paris to act as assistant professor of poetry in the university. He became professor in 1897. He was elected to the Académie française in 1900, and received the ribbon of the Legion of Honour in the next year.
He acted as dramatic critic to the Soleil; from 1892 he was literary critic to the Revue bleue; and in 1896 took the place of Jules Lemaitre on the Journal des débats.
Among his works are monographs on Gustave Flaubert (1899), André Chénier (1902), Emile Zola (1903); an admirably concise Histoire de la littérature française depuis le XVII' siècle jusqu'a nos jours; series of literary studies on the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries; Questions politiques (1899); Propos littéraires (3 series, 1902-1905); Le Libéralisme (1902); and L'Anticléricalisme (1906); Vie de Rousseau (1911); Petite histoire de la littérature française (1913)
See Alphonse Séché, Émile Faguet (1904).
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