Edmond Adolphe Lepelletier

Lepelletier, Edmond Adolphe 

Born June 26, 1846, in Paris; died July 23, 1913, in Vittel. French man of letters and publicist. Lawyer by profession.

In the late 1860’s Lepelletier published a number of articles against the regime of Napoleon III, for which he was sentenced to prison. He was liberated after the revolution of Sept. 4, 1870. Lepelletier welcomed the Paris Commune of 1871, although he did not actively participate in it. From the 1870’s on, he worked for the radical press and wrote articles against the adherents of Boulangism and the anti-Dreyfusards.

Lepelletier’s novels had little success: Madame Sans-Gêne (vols. 1–3, 1894–95) and Fanfan-la-Tulipe (1896–98).

Lepelletier left an unfinished work on the history of the Paris Commune of 1871 in which he attempted, from the standpoint of petit bourgeois historiography, to prove that the existence of the Paris Commune contributed to the establishment of the Third Republic in France.

WORKS

Histoire de la Commune de 1871, vols. 1–3. Paris, 1911–13.