DORAN, JOHN (1807-1878), English author, was born in London of Irish parentage on the 11th of March 1807. He became tutor in several distinguished families, and while travelling on the continent contributed journalistic sketches to _The Literary Chronicle_, a paper which was afterwards incorporated with _The Athenaeum_. His play, _Justice or the Venetian Jew_, was produced at the Surrey theatre in 1824, and in 1830 he began to write translations from French, German, Latin and Italian authors for _The Bath Journal_. After some years of travel on the continent he became in 1841 literary editor of _The Church and State Gazette_, and in 1852 under the title of _Filia dolorosa_ produced a memoir of Maria Thérèse Charlotte, duchesse d'Angoulême. Two years later he became a regular contributor to _The Athenaeum_, succeeding Hepworth Dixon as editor for a short time in 1869, until he became editor of _Notes and Queries_ in 1870. His most elaborate work, _Their Majesties' Servants_, a history of the English stage from Betterton to Kean, was published in 1860, and was supplemented by _In and About Drury Lane_, which was written for _Temple Bar_ and was not published in book form till 1885, after Doran's death. Among his other works may be mentioned _Table Traits_ and _Habits of Men_ (1854), _The Queens of the House of Hanover_ (1855), _Knights and their Days_ (1856), _Monarchs retired from Business_ (1856), _The History of Court Fools_ (1858), an edition of the _Bentley Ballads_ (1858), _The Last Journals of Horace Walpole_ (2 vols., 1859), _The Princess of Wales_ (1860), and the _Memoirs of Queen Adelaide_ (1861). These were followed by _A Lady of the Last Century_ (1873), an account of Mrs Elizabeth Montagu and the blue-stockings; _London in Jacobite Times_ (1877); and _Memories of our Great Towns_ (1878). Doran died in London, on the 25th of January 1878.
DORAT, CLAUDE JOSEPH (1734-1780), French man of letters, was born in Paris on the 31st of December 1734. He belonged to a family whose members had for generations been lawyers, and he entered the corps of the king's musketeers. He obtained a great vogue by his _Réponse d'Abailard à Héloïse_, and followed up this first success with a number of heroic epistles, _Les Victimes de l'amour, ou lettres de quelques amants célèbres_ (1776). Dorat was possessed by an ambition quite out of proportion to his very mediocre ability. Besides light verse he wrote comedies, fables and, among other novels, _Les Sacrifices de l'amour, ou lettres de la vicomtesse de Senanges et du chevalier de Versenay_ (1771). He tried to cover his failures as a dramatist by buying up a great number of seats, and his books were lavishly illustrated by good artists and expensively produced, to secure their success. He was maladroit enough to draw down on himself the hatred both of the _philosophe_ party and of their arch-enemy Charles Palissot, and thus cut himself off from the possibility of academic honours. _Le Tartufe littéraire_ (1777) attacked La Harpe and Palissot, and at the same time D'Alembert and Mlle de Lespinasse. Dorat died on the 29th of April 1780 in Paris.