Jean Jacques Élisée Reclus

Reclus, Élisée (1830-1905). French geographer, remembered particularly for his monumental Géographie universelle (1875-94). A member of the Second International and an anarchist, he took an active part in resistance to the coup d'état of Louis-Napoléon in 1851 and in the Commune of 1871, as did his elder brother Élie (1827-1904), a writer. Their younger brother Onésime (1837-1910) was a geographer and geologist specializing in Africa.

— Peter France

Reclus, Jean Jacques Élisée (zhäN zhäk ālēzā' rəklü') , 1830–1905, French geographer, b. Gironde, educated mainly in Germany, where he studied under Karl Ritter. Several times he was forced to leave France because of his political views; he traveled in the British Isles, the United States, and South America and for many years lived in Switzerland. He was professor of comparative geography at the Univ. of Brussels from 1895 to 1905. The great work of Reclus is his Nouvelle Géographie universelle (19 vol., 1876–94; tr. The Earth and Its Inhabitants, 19 vol., 1876–94). La Terre (2 vol., 1868–69) was also translated into English (The Earth, 2 vol., 1871).