Ch. (Charles) Letourneau

Born in Auray, France, on September 23, 1831, Charles Jean Marie Letourneau became known as an anthropologist, sociologist, and popular science writer. He was active in the Society of Anthropology of Paris and served as its general secretary late in his career, remaining involved there until his death in Paris on February 21, 1902.

Letourneau wrote a long series of books that tried to trace the development of human institutions across cultures. Among the subjects he tackled were marriage and the family, property, literature, education, politics, religion, morality, and war. His work reflects the strong 19th-century interest in using comparison and evolutionary theory to explain human behavior and social life.

Today, Letourneau is mainly remembered as a representative of early French anthropology. Readers approaching him now may find both ambitious scholarship and ideas very much shaped by his era, which makes his work interesting not only for its arguments but also as a window into how people in the late 1800s tried to understand human societies.