Léautaud, Paul (1872-1956). Novelist, essayist, theatre critic, and diarist. Léautaud, an admirer of Voltaire, Diderot, Chamfort, and Stendhal, was a spirit of the French 18th c. stranded in the 20th. A bachelor of biting tongue and a writer of uninhibited mordant prose, he worked as secretary to the Mercure de France from 1908 to 1941, first coming to notice as the co-author, with van Bever, of the anthology Poètes d'aujourd'hui 1880-1900 (1900), which he followed with a tender, slightly risqué autobiographical novel Le Petit Ami (1903), set in the demi-monde of his childhood. As ‘Maurice Boissard’ he was for many years the idiosyncratic drama critic of the Mercure, later of the Nouvelle Revue Française (Le Théâtre de Maurice Boissard 1907-1923, 1926). Quietly plying his quill pen at the hub of Parisian literary life, he remained largely unknown despite occasional volumes of aphorisms, reflections, and souvenirs (Mélange, 1928; Passe-temps, 1929) until, in old age, his sparkling and irreverent radio conversations of 1950 with Robert Mallet (Entretiens avec Robert Mallet, 1951) launched him into fame. His masterpiece remains the 19 volumes of his revealing and acerbic Journal littéraire 1893-1956 (1956-66), largely written amongst cats, candlelight, and cob-webs in the ramshackle pavillon at Fontenay-aux-Roses which was his modest hermitage for the 46 years preceding his death.
[David Steel]
