Émile de Girardin

Independent activity 1802–1881 ○ Natural causes

Journalist and politician whose advertising-funded daily La Presse, sold at half the usual price, opened the age of the mass press

Born in Paris in 1802, the illegitimate son of General Alexandre de Girardin, he built popular magazines to over a hundred thousand subscribers and in 1836 launched La Presse, the first paper to rely on advertising to lower its price, selling at half the usual rate. He married the poet Delphine Gay in 1831. A deputy several times under the July Monarchy, on 24 February 1848 he demanded Louis Philippe's abdication and the regency of the Duchess of Orléans, and that year he backed Louis Napoleon for the presidency. In the Legislative Assembly of 1850–1851 he voted with the Mountain, and his essay on "good" socialism drew the criticism of Marx and Engels. He opposed the coup and briefly went into exile in Brussels; he sat as a deputy again from 1877 until his death in 1881.

Also known as: Emile de Girardin