Leon Bloy (1846-1917)

Leon Bloy was a French Catholic novelist, essayist, pamphleteer and poet who was marginalized because of his Catholic faith at a time of intense anticlerical sentiment. Bloy suffered actual persecution that led him to the brink of poverty to the point that he acquired the nickname “the ungrateful beggar.” A militant journalist, Leon Bloy continued nonetheless to oppose rationalism, naturalism, materialism, and positivism.

He wrote many novels, including “Le Désespéré” (1887) or "The Despairing Man” and “La Femme pauvre” (1897) or “The Poor Woman” as well as his eight-volume diary. In addition to his published works, he left a large body of correspondence with public and literary figures of his time.

Deeply devoted to Our Lady, Bloy also wrote fervent pages on the Virgin Mary, notably in his book “Les larmes de Marie” or “The Tears of Mary” (1).
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(1) See: The Tears of the Mother of Sorrows