author

Henri Bourdon

Best known today for a vivid first-hand account of the 1906 Valparaíso earthquake, this French-language writer appears in public-domain catalogs with a small surviving body of work. His writing is remembered less for literary fame than for the immediacy of eyewitness testimony.

1 Audiobook

De ramp van Valparaiso

De ramp van Valparaiso

by Henri Bourdon

About the author

Henri Bourdon is a little-documented author whose name survives mainly through public-domain book records rather than modern biographical profiles. The clearest verified work linked to him is La catastrophe de Valparaiso, known in Project Gutenberg through the Dutch translation De ramp van Valparaiso.

That book is presented as a first-hand account of the devastating earthquake that struck Valparaíso, Chile, on August 16, 1906. The surviving text suggests a direct, observational style focused on destruction, panic, relief efforts, and everyday human experience in the aftermath of disaster.

Because reliable biographical sources on Bourdon are scarce, not much more can be said with confidence about his life. What does stand out is the historical value of his work: it preserves an eyewitness perspective on one of the best-known urban disasters in early twentieth-century South America.