ABOUT, EDMOND. – Journalist and novelist, b. at Dieuze on 14 February 1828, d. in Paris on 16 January 1885. For his ideas, sentiments, and biting, polemical qualities as a writer, he was called the “nephew of Voltaire.” A Bonapartist and confidential informant of Napoleon III, he later became an Orleanist and finally a republican. After a stay in Rome, he published La Question romaine (1859) in Belgium, which he partly reworked in Rome contemporaine (1860). It contains the usual tirades against temporal power and Roman corruption, slanderous and irreverent assertions against Pius IX and Antonelli, and salacious, malicious anecdotes.
The generally poor quality of his work as a narrator is demonstrated by the indecorous novel Madelon (1863). Francesco Casnati