Louis Marie Fontan (November 4, 1801 – October 10, 1839), a French man of letters, was born in Lorient and died in Thiais.
He began his career as a clerk in a government office, but was dismissed for taking part in a political banquet.
At the age of nineteen he went to Paris and began to contribute to the Tablettes and the Album.
He was brought to trial for political articles written for the latter paper, but defended himself so energetically that he secured indefinite postponement of his trial.
The offending paper was suppressed for a time, and Fontan produced a collection of political poems, Odes et epîtres, and a number of plays, of which Perkins Warbec (1828), written in collaboration with MM.
In 1828 the Album was revived, and in it Fontan published a virulent but witty attack on Charles X, entitled Le Mouton enrage (June 10, 1829).
To escape the inevitable prosecution Fontan fled over the frontier, but, finding no safe asylum, he returned to Paris to give himself up to the authorities, and was sentenced to five years' imprisonment and a heavy fine.
i and also in Eugène Briffault's biographical portrait "Fontan" in the collection Nouvelles parisiennes (1843).
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed.