author

Jacques Morel

1867–1949

A French novelist and translator who wrote under a male pen name, this little-known literary figure built a career across fiction, journalism, and adaptation. Her life and work offer a glimpse of how women navigated the literary world of early 20th-century France.

1 Audiobook

Feuilles mortes

Feuilles mortes

by Jacques Morel

About the author

Writing as Jacques Morel, Madeleine Pottier was a French author born in Paris on March 11, 1867, and she died there on December 10, 1949. Sources identify Jacques Morel as her pen name rather than her birth name.

She worked as a novelist and translator, and her career appears to have crossed several kinds of writing, including fiction and literary adaptation. The choice of a male pseudonym is one of the most striking details about her profile today, suggesting the constraints and expectations faced by women writers in her era.

Reliable biographical information available online is limited, so many personal details remain unclear. Even so, the record that survives points to a long literary life centered in Paris and to a body of work that deserves renewed attention from readers interested in overlooked French authors.