Girardin, ÉMILE DE, a French journalist and politician, the illegitimate son of the royalist general Alexandre de Girardin and Madame Dupuy, was born in Switzerland in 1806, and educated in Paris. He bore the name of Delamothe until 1827, when he assumed that of his father, who acknowledged him in 1847; and his first attempt in literature was a novel, Émile, in which he pleaded the cause of adulterine children. After the July revolution (1830) he established the Journal des Connaissances Utiles, which attained a sale of 120,000 copies; other cheap magazines followed, but he did not carry out his idea of a halfpenny newspaper until 1836, when he founded the Presse, an Orleanist journal with
Conservative leanings. Its rivals accused it of being subsidised by the government, and one of the unfortunate results of the quarrels thus fastened on Girardin was his duel with Armand Carrel, editor of the National, in which the latter fell. From this time onward to the Revolution of 1848 Girardin was ardently occupied with politics, both as a journalist and a deputy, and gradually became a decided republican. He promoted Louis Napoleon's election to the presidency, but disapproved of the coup d'état, and was rewarded with a short period of exile. He next threw himself into the arms of the Socialists. In 1856 he sold his share of the Presse, but became its editor again in 1862, eventually abandoning it for the direction of the Liberté, which he maintained till 1870. He excelled his fellows in braggadocio on the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian war; and during the Commune he proposed a scheme for splitting up the republic into fifteen federal states. In 1874, however, he founded the France, and both in its pages and in the Petit Journal supported the republic. He wrote a few pieces for the stage; his political ideas he gave to the world in a host of brochures. Girardin died 27th April 1881.—His first wife, whose maiden name was Delphine Gay (1805-55), enjoyed for many years a brilliant reputation as a poetess and beauty, and also wrote several novels and plays. Her best-known work is Lettres Parisiennes, which appeared in the Presse, under the pseudonym of Vicomte de Launay, in 1836-48. Her complete works fill 6 vols. (1860-61). See Imbert de Saint-Amand, Madame de Girardin (Paris, 1874).