bio notes:
born: 2/5/1848
died: 5/12/1907
born as: Charles-Marie-Georges Huysmans
nationality: France

French novelist, author of A rebours [Against the Grain] and La-bas [Down There]. He was also one of the foremost art critics of his generation and was one of the first to appreciate the Impressionists.
French writer whose major novels epitomized successive phases of the aesthetic, spiritual, and intellecutal life of late 19th Century France. - Merriam-Webster's Encyclopedia of Literature