Jacques-François Ancelot

Three editions of the play were speedily exhausted; it had a run of fifty representations, and brought him a pension of 2000 francs from Louis XVIII.

[1] By the Revolution of July 1830 he lost at once his royal pension and his office as librarian at Meudon; and he was chiefly employed during the next ten years in writing vaudevilles and light dramas and comedies.

[1] His play Têtes Rondes et Cavaliers, co-authored with Joseph Xavier Saintine, was premiered at the Théâtre du Vaudeville in Paris on 25 September 1833; it also formed the basis for the libretto of the 1835 opera I Puritani, by Vincenzo Bellini.

Ancelot was sent by the French government in 1849 to Turin, Florence, Brussels and other capitals, to negotiate on the subject of international copyright; and the treaties which were concluded soon after were the result, in a great measure, of his tact and intelligence.

[1] Ancelot's wife, Marguerite, was a noted painter, writer and also a playwright, and hosted an important literary salon in Paris from 1822 to 1866.