August Heinrich Julius Lafontaine (1758–1831)

Of French descent, became an army chaplain and was later a canon of the Magdeburg chapter. An extremely prolific author, Lafontaine wrote between 1791 and 1820 a quantity of moralizing novels in which vice is described as well as cured. Some of his sentimental stories are presented in the form of letters. He was one of the most widely read German authors at the turn of the 18th c., and his novels are said to have been the favourite reading of King Friedrich Wilhelm III of Prussia.