ABOUT, EDMOND FRANCOIS VALENTIN (1828 1885), French novelist, publicist and journalist, was born Feb. 14 1828, at Dieuze, in Lorraine. Among his college contemporaries at the Ecole Normale were Taine, Francisque, Sarcey, Challemel Lacour and Prevost-Paradol. Of them all About was, according to Sarcey, the most highly vitalized, exuberant, brilliant and "undisciplined." After a brief period spent at the French school in Athens he returned to Paris, and became an industrious and lively journalist. About's attitude towards the Empire was that of a candid friend. He greeted the liberal ministry of Emile 011ivier at the beginning of 187o with delight, and welcomed the Franco-German War.
With the fall of the Empire he became a republican, and, always an inveterate anti-clerical, he fought against the conservative reaction which made head during the first years of the republic. From 1872 onwards for some five or six years his paper, the X/Xe Siecle, of which he was the heart and soul, became a power in the land. On Jan. 23 1884, he was elected a member of the French Academy, but died Jan. 16 1885, before taking his seat. About's best work is to be found, not in the once famous Roman d'un brave homme (188o), but in the books that are almost wholly farcical, Le nez d'un notaire (1862) ; Le roi des montagnes (1856) ; L'homme a l'oreille cassee (1862) ; Trente et quarante (1858) ; Le cas de M. Guerin (1862). Here his most genuine wit, his sprightliness, his vivacity, the fancy that was in him, have free play.