Max O'Rell was the pen name of Léon Paul Blouet (3 March 1847 – 24 May 1903), French author and journalist.
Early life
Max O'Rell was born Léon Pierre Blouet on 3 March 1847 in Avranches, a small town adjoining the Abbey of Mont St Michel in Normandy at the border with Brittany. He later preferred the name Léon Paul Blouet.
His paternal grandfather, Jean-François Blouet, was the warden of the prison of Mont St Michel from 1806 to 1818. He moved to Paris at the age of twelve where he attended the Conservatoire de Paris and the collège in Paris. He took a B.A. degree in 1865 and a BSc in 1866 at the Sorbonne. After 1866, he enrolled at the École Militaire, then based at Saint-Cyr-l'École. Passing out in 1869, he was commissioned as a lieutenant into the French artillery, spent five months in Algeria, and then after a short stay in the Versailles garrison was posted to fight in the Franco-Prussian War. He took part in the Battle of Wörth in August 1870 and was taken prisoner at Sedan. Once released, he was immediately employed against the Commune in Paris. On 14 April 1871, he was wounded, honourably discharged, and granted a small pension.
Teacher and author in London
With little prospects in France, Blouet decided to become a journalist and left for London in 1872. In 1874 he obtained a post as senior master of French at the prestigious St Paul's London boys' school. Later that year, he married Mary Bartlett in Devonshire. Their daughter Léonie was born in 1875. At the beginning of the 1880s, Blouet started to prepare a book of sketches about England, probably inspired by Hippolyte Taine's Notes sur l'Angleterre. John Bull et son île was published in Paris by Calmann-Lévy in 1883 under the pseudonym Max O'Rell, which he had assumed to preserve the dignity of his teaching post. The book gives an overview of English customs, peculiarities and institutions, discussing very diverse aspects – from British colonial ambitions to the Anglo-Saxon concept of home. The French version became an instant success and went through at least fifty-seven editions within two years. It quickly found its way across the Channel. By December 1883, Max O'Rell, with the aid of his wife, had created an English version which eventually sold 275 000 copies in England, and 200 000 in the United States. The book was translated into seventeen languages.
