Damaged Goods : The great play "Les avariés" by Brieux, novelized with the approval of the author

Eugène Brieux (19 January 1858 – 6 December 1932), French dramatist, was born in Paris of poor parents. A one-act play, Bernard Palissy, written in collaboration with M. Gaston Salandri, was produced in 1879, but he had to wait eleven years before he obtained another hearing, his Ménage d’artistes being produced by Antoine at the Théâtre Libre in 1890. His plays are essentially didactic, being aimed at some weakness or iniquity of the social system. Blanchette (1892) pointed out the civic results of education of girls of the working classes; Monsieur de Réboval (1892) was directed against pharisaism; L’Engrenage (1894) against corruption in politics; Les Bienfaiteurs (1896) against the frivolity of fashionable charity; and L’Évasion (1896) satirized an indiscriminate belief in the doctrine of heredity.