26 September 2015

Paris 2015: Hippolyte de Villemessant, Cimetière d'Auteuil #3

Jean Hippolyte Auguste Delaunay de Villemessant (1810–79) was a journalist and a newspaper owner, notably of the right-wing Le Figaro, which I believe is the oldest paper still produced in France. On 17 April 1879, Le Figaro had a black border : Hippolyte de Villemessant had been buried the day before in this cemetery. Many people attended his funeral, and Alphonse Daudet and Gustave Flaubert recognised his death as a loss to the literary (and polical) world.

No comments: