Jules de Gastyne

Born in Sanxay, in western France, on June 12, 1847, Jules de Gastyne was the pen name of Jules Sillas Benoist. He became a journalist and went on to build a busy career as a novelist and dramatist, writing in forms that were especially popular with newspaper readers and theater audiences of his time.

He was known above all for romans-feuilletons—serialized fiction published in installments—as well as vaudevilles and other stage works. Modern library and archival sources describe him as a highly productive writer who enjoyed real public success, even if he never gained the lasting literary prestige of some of his contemporaries.

De Gastyne died in Paris on June 14, 1920. Today, he is mostly remembered through French literary archives such as Gallica and the Bibliothèque nationale de France, where his novels and plays remain a window into the tastes of readers during the decades from roughly 1870 to 1920.