Maurice Joly

Maurice Joly (French pronunciation: [mɔʁis ʒɔli]; 22 September 1829 – 15 July 1878) was a French political writer and lawyer known for The Dialogue in Hell Between Machiavelli and Montesquieu, a political satire of Napoleon III.

Known life

Most of the known information about Monsieur Joly is based upon his autobiographical sketch, Maurice Joly, Son Passé, Son Programme, par Lui-même,

written at Conciergerie prison in November 1870, where he was jailed for an assault at Hôtel de Ville, Paris. Some additional facts are mentioned at Henry Rollin's book, L'Apocalypse de notre temps,

and in Maurice Joly, un suicidé de la démocratie – a preface to a modern publication of Joly's Dialogue aux enfers entre Machiavel et Montesquieu, Épilogue and César – by the mysterious F. Leclercq.

Joly was born in the small town of Lons-le-Saunier, in the département of Jura, to a French father and an Italian mother. He studied law in Dijon, but stopped in 1849 in order to go to Paris, where he worked as a clerk at various governmental institutions for about 10 years. He successfully completed his legal studies and was finally admitted to the Paris bar in 1859.

He started writing in 1862, supplying literary portraits of his fellow lawyers to a small magazine, Gorgias, and later published these sketches as a stand-alone book, Le Barreau de Paris,

followed by Les Principes de 89

and Supplément à la géographie politique du Jura.

Then Joly concocted a lampoon, César, where he attacked the political regime of Napoleon III (Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte). The books were printed by the Martin-Beaupré brothers and swiftly destroyed by the publishers. Not a single copy survived.