author

baron Jean-Baptiste Mosneron de Launay

1738–1830

A Nantes-born writer and politician, he moved between commerce, literature, and public life in revolutionary France. He is especially remembered for translating Milton and for the unusual imaginative work Le Vallon aérien.

1 Audiobook

Le Vallon Aérien Ou, Relation du voyage d'un aéronaute dans un pays inconnu jusqu'à présent; suivie de l'histoire de ses habitans et de la description de leurs moeurs

Le Vallon Aérien Ou, Relation du voyage d'un aéronaute dans un pays inconnu jusqu'à présent; suivie de l'histoire de ses habitans et de la description de leurs moeurs

by baron Jean-Baptiste Mosneron de Launay

About the author

Born in Nantes on August 28, 1738, Jean-Baptiste Mosneron de Launay came from a wealthy family of shipowners. Contemporary parliamentary and library records describe him as both a man of letters and a politician, and note that although he traveled in England, Holland, and Saint-Domingue, he was drawn more strongly to literature than to trade.

He studied law in Paris, wrote tragedies, and published a French translation of Milton's Paradise Lost in 1786, a work that was noted in later parliamentary biography as having several editions. The Bibliothèque nationale de France also records a substantial body of writing under his name, including political and economic texts as well as literary works.

During the French Revolution and the Consulate, he served in public office, including as a deputy for Loire-Inférieure in the Legislative Assembly and later in the Corps législatif. He died at Saint-Gaudens in 1830. A suitable verified portrait image could not be confirmed from the sources reviewed.