Charles Monselet

Born in Nantes on April 30, 1825, and later active in Paris, this French writer worked across poetry, fiction, drama, and journalism. Contemporary readers knew him for his light, charming style, and he became especially associated with writing about food and dining, earning the nickname "the king of the gastronomes."

He grew up in a bookselling family, which helped draw him early toward literature. Over the course of his career he produced a large body of work, including comic and romantic novels as well as essays and newspaper writing.

Today he is often remembered as a cheerful, versatile figure in 19th-century French literary life: a poet and storyteller with a journalist's curiosity, and a critic of taste in more ways than one. He died in Paris on May 19, 1888.