About Edmond François Valentin About
Edmond François Valentin About (14 February 1828 – 16 January 1885) was a French novelist, publicist and journalist. == Biography == About was born at Dieuze, in the Moselle département in the Lorraine region of France. In 1848, he entered the École Normale, taking second place in the annual competition for admission in which Hippolyte Taine came first. Among his college contemporaries, besides Taine, were Francisque Sarcey, Challemel-Lacour and Prevost-Paradol. Of them all, About was considered the most highly vitalized, exuberant, brilliant and "undisciplined". It is said that one of his schoolmasters told him "You will never be more than a little Voltaire" At the end of his college career, he joined the French school in Athens, but claimed that he had never intended to follow the professorial career for which the École Normale was a preparation, and in 1853 he returned to France and devoted himself to literature and journalism. == Career == He made his name as an entertaining anti-clerical writer. The satirical Le Roi des montagnes (1856; translated into English by Mary Louise Booth as The King of the Mountains, and by Tom Taylor as The Brigand and His Banker, for a dramatized version) is the best-known of his novels. In Greece, About had noticed that there was a curious understanding between the brigands and police: brigandage was becoming almost a safe and respectable industry. About pushed this idea to invent the story of a brigand chief who converts his business into a registered joint-stock company.
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