Marie Roch Louis Reybaud

Marie Roch Louis Reybaud (1799-1879), French writer, economist and politician, was born at Marseilles on the 15th of August 1799. After travelling in the Levant and in India, he settled in Paris in 1829. Besides writing for the Radical press, he edited the Histoire scientifique et militaire de l'expedition francaise en Egypte in ten volumes (1830-36) and Dumont d'Urville's Voyage autour du monde (1833). In 1840 he published Etudes sur les reformateurs ou socialistes modernes (see Socialism) which gained him the Montyon prize (1841) and a place in the Academie des sciences morales et politiques (1850). In 1843 he published Jeanie Paturot et la recherche d'une position sociale, a clever social satire that had a prodigious success. In 1846 he abandoned his democratic views, and was elected liberal deputy for Marseilles. His Jerome Paturot a la recherche de la meilleure des republiques (1848) was a satire on the new Republican ideas. After the coup d'etat of 1849 he ceased to take part in public life, and devoted himself entirely to the study of political economy. To this period belong his La Vie de l'employe (1855); L'Industrie en Europe (1856); and Etudes sur le regime de nos manufactures (1859). He died in Paris on the 28th of October 1879.