Joseph Albert Alexandre Glatigny

After an uncertain period on leaving school, the teenager took apprenticeship under a printer at Pont Audemer and there wrote a three-act verse drama for the local theatre about the townsfolk in the 17th century.

During a subsequent stay in Paris he had an act in the cafes and bars in which he improvised poems on rhymes suggested by his audience, putting to use the slight stir that this high-spirited first volume had caused.

[1] Typically, he immediately published an account of the incident in Le jour de l'an d'un vagabond (A day in a tramp's year).

Glatigny's best collection of lyrics, Les Flèches d'or (Arrows of gold), had appeared in 1864, dedicated to the Parnassian poet Leconte de Lisle, with an opening poem addressed to Théophile Gautier.

It was followed by other occasional verse, including Le Fer Rouge (Red light, 1870) and a third collection of poems, Gilles et pasquins (Tom-fooleries, 1872), dedicated to the left-wing politician Camille Pelletan.