Armand de Pontmartin

Who was Armand de Pontmartin?

Armand Augustin Joseph Marie Ferrard, Comte de Pontmartin, French critic and man of letters, was born at Avignon on 16 July 1811. Imbued by family tradition with legitimist sympathies, he began by attacking the followers of the encyclopaedists and their successors. In the Assemblée nationale he published his Causeries litteraires, a series of attacks on prominent Liberals, which created some sensation.

Pontmartin was an indefatigable journalist, and most of his papers were eventually published in volume form: Contes et reveries d'un planteur de choux; Causeries du samedi; Nouveaux samedis, &c. But the most famous of all his books is Les Jeudis de Mme. Charbonneau, which under the form of a novel offered a series of malicious and witty portraits of contemporary writers. Pontmartin died at Avignon on 29 March 1890.

This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed.. Encyclopædia Britannica. Cambridge University Press.