Ernest Capendu

Born in Paris in 1825, Ernest Capendu was a French writer and dramatist who became known for an abundant output of serialized fiction. Library and reference sources describe him as the author of dozens of novels, especially in the popular feuilleton style that flourished in the nineteenth century.

Accounts of his life note that he came from a well-off family and left Paris during the cholera epidemic of 1849, later spending time in places including Marseille and Oran. Those travels appear to have fed into some of his writing, which ranged across adventure, historical, military, maritime, and regional fiction.

Capendu died in Paris on May 19, 1868. Though he is less famous today than some of his contemporaries, he remains a good example of the energetic popular novelists who helped shape mass-market French reading in their era.