Le Siècle

Siècle, Le. Launched in July 1836 on the same day that Girardin founded La Presse, Le Siècle was the archetypal left-of-centre opposition paper, cultivating Voltairean anticlericalism. It was also a commercial success, under both its founder, Armand Dutacq, a lawyer's clerk and would-be press tycoon, and, later, the more prudent Léonor Havin. Dutacq succeeded—more than Girardin—in creating a low-priced daily, aimed at a popular readership, with the right blend of human-interest stories, romans- feuilletons (Balzac, Sue, etc.), and politics. During the Second Empire, at a time when the Republican press was proscribed, it did much to rally the disaffected among the lower middle classes.

[Michael Palmer]