JANIN, JULES GABRIEL (1804-1874), French critic, was born at St Étienne (Loire) on the 16th of February 1804, and died near Paris on the 19th of June 1874. His father was a lawyer, and he was well educated, first at St Étienne, and then at the lycée Louis-le-Grand in Paris. He betook himself to journalism very early, and worked on the _Figaro_, the _Quotidienne_, &c., until in 1830 he became dramatic critic of the _Journal des Débats_. Long before this, however, he had made a considerable literary reputation, for which indeed his strange novel _L'Âne mort et la femme guillotinée_ (1829) would have sufficed. _La Confession_ (1830), which followed, was less remarkable in substance but even more so in style; and in _Barnave_ (1831) he attacked the Orleans family. From the day, however, when Janin became the theatrical critic of the _Débats_, though he continued to write books indefatigably, he was to most Frenchmen a dramatic critic and nothing more. He was outrageously inconsistent, and judged things from no general point of view whatsoever, though his judgment was usually good-natured. Few journalists have ever been masters of a more attractive fashion of saying the first thing that came into their heads. After many years of _feuilleton_ writing he collected some of his articles in the work called _Histoire de la littérature dramatique en France_ (1853-1858), which by no means deserves its title. In 1865 he made his first attempt upon the Academy, but was not successful till five years later. Meanwhile he had not been content with his _feuilletons_, written persistently about all manner of things. No one was more in request with the Paris publishers for prefaces, letterpress to illustrated books and such trifles. He travelled (picking up in one of his journeys a curious windfall, a country house at Lucca, in a lottery), and wrote accounts of his travels; he wrote numerous tales and novels, and composed many other works, of which by far the best is the _Fin d'un monde et du neveu de Rameau_ (1861), in which, under the guise of a sequel to Diderot's masterpiece, he showed his great familiarity with the late 18th century. He married in 1841; his wife had money, and he was always in easy circumstances. In the early part of his career he had many quarrels, notably one with Félix Pyat (1810-1889), whom he prosecuted successfully for defamation of character. For the most part his work is mere improvisation, and has few elements of vitality except a light and vivid style. His _Oeuvres choisies_ (12 vols., 1875-1878) were edited by A. de la Fitzelière. A study on Janin with a bibliography was published by A. Piédagnel in 1874. See also Sainte-Beuve, _Causeries du lundi_, ii. and v., and Gustave Planche, _Portraits littéraires_.