Ernest Desprez

Éléonore Tenaille de Vaulabelle (12 Oct. 1801 – 12 October 1859) was a French writer and playwright. He published his novels under the pseudonym Ernest Desprez and all his plays under the name Jules Cordier.

Biography

After he spent his youth in Bourgogne, Éléonore de Vaulabelle moved to Paris at the end of the Bourbon restauration. There he authored articles in several satirical newspapers as well as a daily pamphlet for Le Figaro, where he met Alphonse Karr and George Sand.

He wrote two novels under the pseudonym Ernest Desprez and a fictionalized autobiography: Un enfant. In Les Femmes vengées, he developed a theory inspired from Molière: "Women are what we make of them". Vaulabelle adds, "If women lie it is because we teach them to lie". But he devoted most of his work to theatre under the pseudonym Jules Cordier, most of the time in collaboration with Clairville. Only the collection of short stories Les Jours heureux appeared under his real name.

If he privately adhered to Republican ideas - probably under the influence of his older brother, Achille Tenaille de Vaulabelle, author of Histoire des deux Restaurations and Minister of Education under general Louis-Eugène Cavaignac's presidency in 1848 – in theatre, he expressed his opposition to the regime according to the forms of the time.

Bibliography

Frédéric de Berthier de Grandry, La Famille d’Achille Tenaille de Vaulabelle (1799-1879), un ministre pionnier de l’Education nationale, préface de Jean-Pierre Soisson, Paris, 1998–2004, (ISBN 978-2-9513699-2-4)