Antoine Jay

Antoine Jay (20 October 1770, Guîtres – 9 April 1854, Courgeac) was a French writer, journalist, historian and politician.

At first an Oratorian at Niort, he studied law at Toulouse then became a lawyer, then briefly worked as the administrator of the district of Libourne.

From 1803 to 1809, he was tutor to the sons of Joseph Fouché, before serving as a civil servant in the Ministry of Police, where he translated English newspapers.

He was an influential opposition journalist, who had supported the French Revolution and First French Empire (serving as a deputy in the Chambre of the Hundred Days and favouring the handover of Napoleon to the Allies after Waterloo), opposing the Bourbon Restoration and finally seeing the triumph of his political ideal in the July Revolution.

[1] However, he is best known for his Conversion d'un romantique (1830), in which he staunchly opposes romanticism, writing: But I will abstain from critical remarks on [their] use of language : they would be too numerous; and indeed our young masters add to the number of rights acquired by romanticism that of distorting the language and making solecisms with impunity.