Edmond Lepelletier

Edmond Lepelletier (26 June 1846 – 22 July 1913) was a French journalist, a prolific popular novelist and a politician.

He is known for his lifelong friendship with Paul Verlaine.

He was initially a radical, fought for the Paris Commune, and wrote for republican journals.

Later he abandoned his friends and became nationalist and antisemitic.

Early years

Lepelletier was born on 26 June 1846 in Paris.

He was born in the Monceau district of Batignolles.

He received a classical education at the Lycée Bonaparte (now the Lycée Condorcet), then enrolled in the Faculty of Law, where he gained a Bachelor's degree.

He never pleaded as a lawyer, and later became a publicist.

He married, and was the father of the playwright Saint-Georges de Bouhélier and of the wife of René Viviani.

He fought 17 duels, was wounded, and only retained his limbs thanks to the surgeon Jules-Émile Péan.

He defended the surgeon obstinately when he was viciously attacked by the press.

Toward the end of the Second French Empire Lepelletier was condemned for attacks on Baron Haussmann, prefect of the Seine.

In the Sainte-Pélagie Prison he met Louis Charles Delescluze, later military commander of the Paris Commune, the writer Jules Vallès, Raoul Rigault and other future supporters of the Commune.

In 1867 he became a political journalist, writing in the Nain Jaune of Paris.

He contributed to the Peuple souverain, Suffrage universel, Patriote français, Rappel à l'homme libre, Droits de l'homme, Radical, Marseillaise, Mot d'ordre and finally to L'Écho de Paris.