Octave Mirbeau notable work The Diary of a Chambermaid
Crisis of the novel
Mirbeau then underwent a grave existential and literary crisis, yet during this time, he still published in serial form a pre-existentialist novel about the artist's fate, Dans le ciel (In the Sky), introducing the figure of a painter (Lucien), directly modeled on Van Gogh. In the aftermath of the Dreyfus Affair — which exacerbated Mirbeau's pessimism — he published two novels judged to be scandalous by self-styled paragons of virtue: Le Jardin des supplices (Torture Garden (1899) and Le Journal d'une femme de chambre (Diary of a Chambermaid) (1900), then Les Vingt et un Jours d'un neurasthénique (The twenty one days of a neurasthenic person) (1901). In the process of writing these works, Mirbeau unsettled traditional novelistic conventions, exercising  collage techniques, transgressing codes of verisimilitude and fictional credibility, and defying the hypocritical rules of propriety.References
Works
Novels
Le Calvaire (1886) (Calvary, New York, 1922).
L'Abbé Jules (1888) (Abbé Jules, Sawtry, Dedalus, 1996).
Sébastien Roch (1890) (Sébastien Roch, Sawtry, Dedalus, 2000).
Dans le ciel (1892–1893) (In the Sky).
Le Jardin des supplices (1899) (Torture Garden, New York, 1931; The Garden of Tortures, London, 1938) .
Le Journal d'une femme de chambre (1900) (A Chambermaid's Diary, New York, 1900 ; The Diary of a Lady's Maid, London, 1903 ; Célestine, Being the Diary of a Chambermaid, New York, 1930 ; Diary of a Chambermaid, New York, 1945).
Les Vingt et un Jours d'un neurasthénique (1901).
Dingo (novel) (1913).
Un gentilhomme (1919).
Les Mémoires de mon ami (1920).
Œuvre romanesque, 3 volumes, Buchet/Chastel – Société Octave Mirbeau, 2000–2001, 4 000 pages. Website of Éditions du Boucher, 2003–2004.
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