Prosper Mérimée

Mérimée, Prosper (1803–70), French author, historian, archeologist, and linguist. He is best known for his novelettes (long short stories such as “Mateo Falcone” (1829), “Colomba” (1840), and the romance “Carmen” (1845), which was the source of Georges Bizet's opera. Mérimée also wrote essays and translations in the 1850s intended to interest the French in Russia and its literature.