Daniel Lesueur (1854–1921)

Daniel Lesueur was the pen name of Jeanne Lapauze, née Loiseau. She was born in the Batignolles district of Paris, which boasted an active cultural life in the late 19th-century; it was also home to Paul Verlaine, Édouard Manet, and Émile Zola. She worked as an au pair in London and on her return home tutored students privately. Her literary career took off when she was 22 years old, and she was then able to support herself solely through her writing. Her male pseudonym came from her publisher, Lemerre, who derived it from one of his maternal ancestors, Daniel O'Connell, and the maiden name of his mother. Le Mariage de Gabrielle (1882), her first published novel, appeared the same year as her first volume of poems, Fleurs d'avril (1882), which won a prize from the Académie française. Among her 30 other books were L'Amant de Geneviève (1883), Marcelle (1885), Une Vie tragique (1890), Justice de femme (1893), Honneur d'une femme (1901), and La Force du passé (1905). In 1904, she married Henri Lapauze, a well-known art writer. In 1905, she published L'Evolution feminine, a book on the economic status of women. She also produced a three-volume translation of the works of Lord Byron in 1891-1893, which was awarded another prize from the Académie. Masque d'amour, a play based on her 1904 novel of the same name, was performed the following year starring Sarah Bernhardt. In 1900, she became one of the first women to receive the Légion d'honneur. Avenue Daniel-Lesueur, a street in the Montparnasse district of Paris, is named in her honor.