Henri Masers de Latude

author

Henri Masers de Latude

1725–1805

Best known for his dramatic escapes and long imprisonment in the Bastille, this 18th-century French memoirist turned personal misfortune into one of the era’s most memorable prison stories. His life reads like an adventure tale, full of intrigue, endurance, and public scandal.

1 Audiobook

Mémoires authentiques de Latude,

Mémoires authentiques de Latude,

by Henri Masers de Latude

About the author

Born in 1725, Jean Henri Masers de Latude was a French writer and adventurer whose name became closely tied to the Bastille. He spent many years imprisoned under the Ancien Régime and later gained wide attention for the story of his confinement and repeated escape attempts.

Latude became famous after publishing memoirs that described his arrests, his survival in prison, and the dramatic efforts he made to regain his freedom. Those writings helped shape his public image in the years around the French Revolution, when the Bastille itself had become a powerful political symbol.

He died in Paris in 1805. Today he is remembered less as a conventional literary figure than as a vivid witness to imprisonment, injustice, and self-invention in 18th-century France.