Charles-Victor-Hilaire Ratier (13 January 1807 – 6 August 1898) was a 19th-century French lithographer, playwright and printer.
Biography The son of a librarian in the Conseil d'État, Ratier became a teacher of English in the high school of Bourges. He later abandoned this occupation, became a journalist at the Journal du Cher, then a lithographer and printer, patented in Paris on 14 February 1829 in succession to Pierre-François Ducarme.
In 1829, he founded with the lithographer printer Sylvestre Nicolas Durier the illustrated periodical .
He made numerous lithographs and engravings for theatrical publications and magazines, including Album pour rire or Miroir des dames, and many poster prints. He was also the printer and translator of English-language novels, including Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe (1853) and Evangeline by Henry Longfellow (1864).
By his profession, letters were addressed to him by important personalities like Honoré de Balzac who was a friend.See René Bouvier, Edouard Maynial, Les comptes dramatiques de Balzac, 1938 (p. 114).
His plays, including some written under the pseudonym Victor BenoîtEdmond Antoine Poinsot, Dictionnaire Des Pseudonymes, 1869 (p. 41). were presented on the most important Parisian stages of his time: Théâtre du Panthéon, Théâtre de l'Ambigu-Comique etc.
Theatre works 1832: Le Te-Deum et le De Profundis, comédie en vaudeville in one act, 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, comédie en vaudeville in one act 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 in one act 1878: Le Dernier des Wiberg
Bibliography Encyclopédie des gens du monde: répertoire universel des sciences..., vol. 4, 1834, p. 737 Joseph-Marie Quérard, La France littéraire ou dictionnaire bibliographique..., 1854, p. 670 Gustave Vapereau, Dictionnaire universel des contemporains, vol. 2, 1870, p. 1504 (read online)
See also
List of French artists List of French engravers List of French writers List of playwrights List of printmakers List of translators
References
External links Victor Ratier on Data.bnf.fr