Introduction
Charles-Victor-Hilaire Ratier (13 January 1807 – 6 August 1898) was an 19th-century French playwright, lithographer and printer.
Biography
The son of a librarian in the Conseil d'État, a teacher of English in the high school of Bourges, he abandoned this business, became a journalist at the Journal du Cher, then a lithographer and printer, patented in Paris February 14, 1829 in succession to Pierre-François Ducarme. In 1829 he founded with the lithographer printer Sylvestre Nicolas Durier the illustrated periodical La Silhouette.
We owe him numerous lithographs and engravings for theatrical publications and magazines such as Album pour rire or Miroir des dames, and many poster prints. He was also the printer and translator of English language novels such as Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe (1853) or Evangeline by Henry Longfellow (1864).
By his profession, letters were addressed to him by important personalities like Honoré de Balzac who was a friend.
His plays, including some written under the pseudonym Victor Benoît were presented on the most important Parisian stages of his time: Théâtre du Panthéon, Théâtre de l'Ambigu-Comique etc.
Works
- 1832: Le Te-Deum et le De Profundis, one-act comédie en vaudeville, with Déaddé Saint-Yves and Michel Théodore Leclercq
- 1832: Odette, ou la Petite reine, chronique-vaudeville du temps de Charles VI, with Saint-Yves
- 1835: Arthur et Frédéric, ou Un duel d'écoliers
- 1838: Rose et Colas, with Saint-Yves and Léon de Villiers, one-act comédie en vaudeville
- 1840: Les Chiffonniers et les Balayeurs, tragedies in one act and in verse, with Edmé-Jacques-Benoît Rathery
- 1842: Mme Tastu
- 1863: Pauvre Père, vaudeville en un acte
- 1878: Le Dernier des Wiberg