It was founded as a daily paper in 1870 with the backing of Napoleon III but after a year re-established itself as a general interest weekly magazine and is chiefly remembered nowadays for its highly independent drama criticism.
At this point it changed format from a newspaper to a weekly magazine owing to the withdrawal of its financial support as a result of French defeat in the Franco-Prussian War.
Mortimer was very supportive of his writers and in particular strove to shield the identities of his drama critics, Clement Scott, and later William Archer, both of whom wrote under the pseudonym, Almaviva.
Owing to a combination of misfortune and bad decisions Mortimer lost the case and was sentenced to three months in prison and a heavy fine.
By the late 1890s, however, it had lost much of its readership; and at a shareholders' Extraordinary General Meeting in December 1897, it was agreed to wind it up.