The years 1791–92 saw the publication, in Paris, of a novel enigmatically entitled Ann'quin Bredouille, by a certain Jean-Claude Gorjy. Like many other contemporary novels, it went unnoticed and immediately fell into oblivion. Very little is known about its author, Jean-Claude Gorjy (1753 or 1755–95). He is first mentioned by Charles Monselet, and described by the epithet “un lézard littéraire” (Monselet 1864: 229). While Gorjy's oeuvre is fairly sparse, it is distinctly marked by a fascination with Laurence Sterne. Gorjy made his debut in 1784, with a book Nouveau voyage sentimental (New Sentimental Journey), which was not unsuccessful. Thus, he joined the ranks of Sterne's imitators who wished to use both Sterne's narrative pattern, linking barely connected scenes, stories, digressions and comments, as well as the sentimental tonality, which went on to become a solid staple of French literature in the 1780s. A Sentimental Journey influenced also other works written by Gorjy during the Revolution: Tablettes sentimentales du bon Pamphile pendant les mois d'Août, Septembre, Octobre et Novembre en 1789 (1791) and the novel which is the focus of this paper, Ann'quin Bredouille. Altogether Gorjy's output comprises, apart from the above-mentioned books, three sentimental novels of manners (Blançay, 1787; Victorine, 1789; Saint-Alme 1790) and a mediaeval pseudo-chronicle, Lidorie (1790).

Jean-Claude Gorjy's work was rescued from oblivion in the last two decades of the twentieth century. It attracted academic interest because of features typical of sentimental literature (Denby 1994: 25–40), as well as the critique of the Great French Revolution in his last two books (Cook 1982, 1993; Coulet 1983; Denby 1990; Krief 2010).