ABOUT, EDMOND (member of the Academie Francaise), born at Dieuze (Lorraine), 1828, died at Paris, 1885. It was especially as a novelist that About made his reputation, and it is to be regretted that politics, after 1871, reduced this inimitable romance writer, who had produced such works as the Rot des Montagnes and the Mariages de Paris, to the position of a mere editor of a journal (the XIX. Siecle). The works which should be noticed in this place were written between the purely literary period and the more militant period of About's animated life. In Maitre Pierre (1858) and the Lettres d'un bon jeune homme (1860) About, as a passionate admirer of the wonders of human industry, and the conscientious defender of the principles of laissez faire laissez passer, still writes as a novelist and a storyteller. But genuine didactic works followed. We may cite is Prop-ts (1864) and l' A B C du travailleur (1868), l'Assurance (1865) and le Capital pour tous (1869). In these last-named works the author limits himself to setting forth the principles which others had formulated before him, while he denounces certain errors of interpretation. Though About may be described as only a populariser, he yet deserves consideration from the students of economic science, to which, for ten years, he devoted all the resources of his humour, imagination, and in comparable style. A. DE F.