Claude Godard d'Aucour

Born in Langres in 1716 and later known as the marquis de Plancy, Claude Godard d'Aucour was a French writer, dramatist, and librettist. He also held important financial posts under the Ancien Régime, including service as a fermier général, which placed him close to the world of privilege and power that shaped much of his era.

He is best remembered for Thémidore ou Mon histoire et celle de ma maîtresse (1745), a libertine novel that brought him lasting literary notice. Alongside fiction, he wrote for the stage and for opera, making him one of those eighteenth-century figures whose career crossed easily between fashionable literature and theatrical entertainment.

D'Aucour died in Paris in 1795, having lived through the collapse of the old order in which he had made his career. Today he remains a small but vivid presence in French literary history, especially for readers interested in Rococo wit, libertine fiction, and the social world of pre-Revolutionary France.