Georges Ohnet

Georges Ohnet (Paris, April 3, 1848 - May 5, 1918) was a French novelist of great success in the second half of the nineteenth century, the best-selling of his time, even over Emile Zola and Daudet. One of the most prolific playwrights and French novelists of the nineteenth century, he was born into a wealthy bourgeois family. He studied at the Collège Sainte-Barbe and the Lycée Napoleon, in Paris, and later studied laws. For some time he worked as a lawyer, but soon began his career in journalism becoming known in this way in the Parisian literary world. After the Franco-Prussian War in 1870, he became a columnist for "Le Pays" and later "Le Constitutionnel", where Ohnet was responsible for the political section and serial drama. Ohnet was a great reader of public taste. It was this astute understanding of his readership that helped him devise the passionate style he became famous for. He disdained the romantic melodrama motif, choosing instead to explore complex passion. His literary genius lay in being able to introduce originality into a genre so deeply archetypal as the romantic melodrama. It was this quality that made him one of most widely read writers of his time.