Louis Ange Pitou

Born in April 1767 in Valainville, near Châteaudun, and dead in Paris on May 8, 1846, Louis-Ange Pitou was a French writer, journalist, bookseller, and counterrevolutionary voice. Sources agree that he became known for royalist songs and writings during the Revolution, which repeatedly put him in danger.

French reference sources describe a dramatic career: he was trained for the priesthood when young, later threw himself into political writing and song, and was arrested many times for his royalist commitments. He was deported to French Guiana under the Directory, escaped, and eventually returned to France.

Pitou is remembered less as a major literary stylist than as a vivid witness to revolutionary France. For readers today, his appeal lies in that firsthand quality: his work comes from someone who lived through upheaval and wrote from the losing side of the age.