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an old photo of a man in a coat and a canean old postcard with a signature of a man on it
Balsan Encheres

748 - HAUTES ALPES / LOIRET / LITERATURE – PONSON du TERRAIL (*).
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Estimate €40
Sale commission
Description
HAUTES ALPES / LOIRET / LITERATURE – PONSON du TERRAIL (*). PHOTOGRAPH, circa 1870, full-length portrait, by DISDERI, PARIS / LONDON. Albumen bromide mounted on card, visiting-card size 10.5 x 6.3 cm. ( * ) Viscount Pierre Alexis Joseph, Ferdinand de Ponson du Terrail: born on 10 July 1829 in MONTMAUR / Hautes-Alpes, died in BORDEAUX on 20 January 1871. He attended the secondary school in Apt and then the Lycée de Marseille (now known as the Lycée Thiers). Around 1846, the newspaper *Le Courrier de Marseille* published his first work. In 1847, upon arriving in Paris, he joined the Mobile Guard. From 1850 onwards, he contributed serialised novels to numerous newspapers; in 1865, he was simultaneously running five serialised novels in five daily newspapers. – A popular WRITER, he wrote 200 novels and serialised stories in twenty years. A master of the serialised novel, his famous character “ROCAMBOLE” gave the language the adjective ‘rocambolesque’. Between 1865 and 1871, he wrote several novels, including *L’Orléanais*, set in the Sologne region, where he had acquired a property. In 1870, he played an active part in the defence of the country by taking up arms. He organised a corps of francs-tireurs made up of peasants and hunters from the Sologne region, operating in the Forest of Marchenoir. Faced with the advancing Prussian forces, who burnt down his estate, he followed the government to Tours, then to Bordeaux, where he succumbed to a smallpox epidemic, leaving the ‘Rocambole’ saga unfinished. A huge crowd attended his funeral at the Church of Sainte Eulalie in Bordeaux. His body was not returned to Paris until 1878. He was buried there, in the presence of Alexandre Dumas the Younger and many other authors and newspaper editors, at Montmartre Cemetery.
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About the sale SALE OF COINS, BANKNOTES, MEDALS, CIVILIAN AND MILITARY HEADGEAR, INSIGNIA AND DECORATIONS – lots 300 to 598 Followed by OLD PAPERS, PHOTOGRAPHS, POSTCARDS, DOCUMENTS AND MISCELLANEOUS ITEMS – Lots 599 to 862
Auction location
Auction time 10/20/2026 at 2:00 PM
Pictures credits: Contact the Auction House
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