Eugène Sue

Eugène Sue (1804 to 1857) was a French novelist who helped popularize the serial novel in France. His most famous work, The Mysteries of Paris, ran in a newspaper from 1842 to 1843 and was widely imitated, spawning a whole class of city-mystery fiction around the world. He began with sea adventures drawn from his own service as a naval surgeon, including Kernock le pirate and Atar-Gull, then turned to the socialist and anti-clerical ideas of the day in The Mysteries of Paris and The Wandering Jew (1844 to 1845), a Gothic serial whose villain is a murderous Jesuit. Later works include The Seven Deadly Sins and the long historical series Les Mystères du peuple, which the censor suppressed in 1857. After the 1848 revolution he sat in the Legislative Assembly and was exiled after protesting the 1851 coup. His popularity in his prime rivalled that of Alexandre Dumas.