Ernest Capendu

Born in Paris on November 30, 1825, Ernest Capendu became one of the many energetic storytellers who helped define the age of the French feuilleton, or serial novel. He wrote dozens of novels and was often grouped with other popular adventure and suspense writers of the period, prized less for literary prestige than for gripping plots and a strong instinct for keeping readers turning pages.

He first worked in the theater, collaborating with writers including Xavier de Montépin and Théodore Barrière, before turning mainly to fiction. During the cholera epidemic that followed the upheavals of 1848, he left Paris and traveled through Marseille, Oran, Algeria, Morocco, and Syria; those journeys later surfaced in the places and atmosphere of several books.

Capendu died in Paris on May 19, 1868, still relatively young, but he left behind a substantial body of work. The Bibliothèque nationale de France lists a large number of novels, plays, and related publications connected with his name, showing how widely he wrote during his short career.