A. (Alfred) Bégis

Born on January 7, 1829, in Villegrois, Alfred Bégis was a French lawyer who also built a reputation as a historian and man of letters. French national library records identify him as an author, and learned-society records describe him as an avocat with a strong interest in modern and Revolutionary history.

Bégis is especially associated with historical research drawn from original documents. One of his best-known works, Le registre d'écrou de la Bastille, de 1782 à 1789, explores prison records from the years just before the French Revolution. He was also active in the world of book collecting and literary societies, serving as secretary of the Société des amis des livres and as treasurer-archivist of the Société d’histoire contemporaine.

He died in Paris in 1904. Today, he is remembered less as a famous public figure than as one of those careful nineteenth-century scholars who preserved fragments of the past—especially the records, controversies, and bibliographic curiosities that larger histories often leave behind.