Émile de Girardin

Who was Émile de Girardin?

Émile de Girardin was a French journalist, publicist, and politician.

Girardin was born in Paris, the son of General Alexandre de Girardin and of his mistress Madame Dupuy, wife of a Parisian advocate.

His first publication was a novel, Émile, dealing with his birth and early life, and appeared under the name of Girardin in 1827. He became inspector of fine arts under the Martignac ministry just before the revolution of 1830, and was an energetic and passionate journalist. Besides his work on the daily press he issued miscellaneous publications which attained an enormous circulation. His Journal des connaissances utiles had 120,000 subscribers, and the initial edition of his Almanach de France ran to a million copies. He founded the illustrated literary magazine Musée des familles in 1833.

In 1836 he inaugurated penny press journalism in a popular Conservative organ, La Presse, the subscription to which was only forty francs a year. This undertaking involved him in a duel with Armand Carrel, the fatal result of which made him refuse satisfaction to later opponents. In 1839 he was excluded from the Chamber of Deputies, to which he had been elected four times, on the plea of his foreign birth, but was admitted in 1842. He resigned early in February 1847, and on February 24, 1848 sent a note to Louis Philippe demanding his resignation and the regency of the duchess of Orléans.