ABOUT, EDMOND. - Journalist and novelist, b. at Dieuze, Feb. 14, 1828, d. in Paris, Jan. 16, 1885. On account of his ideas, sentiments, and the biting, polemical qualities of his writing, he was called the "nephew of Voltaire." A Bonapartist, confidential informer of Napoleon III, he later became an Orleanist and finally a republican. After a stay in Rome, he published in Belgium *La Question romaine* (1859), which he partly reworked in *Rome contemporaine* (1860). There are the usual tirades against the temporal power and Roman corruption, calumnious and irreverent assertions against Pius IX and Antonelli, salacious and malicious anecdotes.
The general quality of his narrative work is evidenced by the obscene novel *Madelon* (1863). Francesco Casnati