author
Edmond Plauchut
1824–1909
A French journalist, traveler, and writer, he led an unusually wide-ranging life that carried him from provincial journalism to Manila and into the circle of George Sand. His work is remembered for its firsthand travel writing and for the papers that preserve his literary life and friendships.
1 Audiobook
China and the Chinese
by Edmond Plauchut
About the author
Born in Saint-Gaudens on January 7, 1824, and dead in Biarritz on January 30, 1909, Edmond Plauchut was a French journalist and travel writer. Records summarized by Wikidata and the Bibliothèque nationale de France identify him as a man of letters who wrote in French and published a substantial body of work.
Yale's guide to his papers describes him as a close friend of George Sand and her son Maurice Sand. After a brief journalistic career in Angoulême, he left France in 1850 for French trade operations in Manila, reached the Philippines in 1851 after a shipwreck disrupted the journey, and later traveled more widely through Southeast Asia and China before returning to France in 1855.
His surviving papers include correspondence, writings, photographs, drawings, and other personal materials, showing both his literary interests and his connection to life at George Sand's Nohant estate. Those archives help explain why he remains an interesting figure today: not only as an author, but also as a witness to nineteenth-century travel, journalism, and literary friendship.