Émile de Girardin KLH |
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Photograph of Girardin (1876)
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Member of the Chamber of Deputies for Seine |
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In office 7 November 1877 – 27 April 1881 |
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Preceded by | Jules Simon |
Succeeded by | Severiano de Heredia |
Constituency | Paris (9th) |
Member of the Chamber of Deputies for Bas-Rhin |
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In office 1850 – 2 December 1851 |
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Preceded by | Gustave Goldenberg |
Succeeded by | Constituency abolished |
Constituency | Molsheim |
Member of the Chamber of Deputies for Tarn-et-Garonne |
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In office 10 July 1842 – 16 July 1846 |
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Preceded by | Bertrand Faure-d'Ère |
Succeeded by | Jean-Pierre Bourjade |
Constituency | Castelsarrasin |
Member of the Chamber of Deputies for Creuse |
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In office 17 August 1846 – 24 February 1848 |
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Preceded by | Louis-Jean-Henry Aubusson de Soubrebost |
Succeeded by | Joseph-Edmond Fayolle |
Constituency | Bourganeuf |
In office 22 June 1834 – 9 July 1842 |
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Preceded by | Adolphe Bourgeois |
Succeeded by | Antoine Regnauld |
Constituency | Genouillac |
Personal details | |
Born |
Paris, Seine, France |
22 June 1802
Died | 27 April 1881 Paris, Seine, France |
(aged 78)
Political party |
Resistance Party (1834–1842) Movement Party (1842–1848) Moderate (1850–1851) Left Republican (1877–1881) |
Spouse(s) | Delphine Gay (m. 1831; d. 1855) |
Profession | Journalist, writer, publisher |
Religion | Roman Catholicism |
Émile de Girardin (22 June 1802 – 27 April 1881) was a French journalist, publisher and politician. was the most successful and flamboyant French journalist of the era, presenting himself as a promoter of mass education through mass journalism' His magazines reached over hundred thousand subscribers, and his inexpensive daily newspaper La Presse undersold the competition by half, thanks to its cheaper production and heavier advertising. Like most prominent journalists, Girardin was deeply involved in politics, and served in parliament. To his bitter disappointment, he never held high office. He was of brilliant polemicist, a master of controversy, with pungent short sentences that immediately caught the reader's attention.
Girardin was born in Paris, the bastard son of General Alexandre de Girardin and of his mistress Madame Dupuy (née Fagnan), 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 (1834) 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.