Pontmartin, Armand Augustin Joseph Marie Ferrard, Comte De
PONTMARTIN, ARMAND AUGUSTIN JOSEPH MARIE FERRARD, COMTE DE (1811-1890), French critic and man of letters, was born at Avignon (Vaucluse) on the 16th of July 1811. Imbued by family tradition with legitimist sympathies, he began by attacking the followers of the encyclopaedists and their successors. In the A ssemblee nalionale he published his Causeries litteraires, a series of attacks on prominent Liberals, which created some sensation. Pontmartin was an indefatigable journalist, and most of his papers were eventually published in volume form: Contes et reveries d'un planteur de choux (1845); Causeries du samedi (1857-1860); Nouveaux samedis (1865-1881), etc. But the most famous of all his books is Les Jeudis de Mme. Charbonneau (1862), which under the form of a novel offered a series of malicious and witty portraits of contemporary writers. Pontmartin died at Avignon on the 29th of March 1890.
See Hatzfeld and Meunier, Les Critiques litteraires du XIX' siide (1894).
Note - this article incorporates content from Encyclopaedia Britannica, Eleventh Edition, (1910-1911)
