Lautréamont, comte de

The Comte de Lautréamont, pseudonym for Isidore Lucien Ducasse, was a French author born in Montevideo, Uruguay, where his father was a French consular officer. His mother died in mysterious circumstances before his second birthday. There was unrest in Montevideo at the time, and when Isidore was sent alone across the Atlantic to attend school in the south of France, it is likely that he arrived with a very different experience of the world from that of his classmates. He was interested in natural history, especially zoology, which was later to inform in his poetry. He left school in 1865 with average grades. Although there is no evidence that he did, he may have suffered from his experiences as a boarder.