Paul Léautaud

Paul Léautaud (18 January 1872 – 22 February 1956) was a French writer and theater critic for Mercure de France, signing his often caustic reviews with the pseudonym Maurice Boissard.

"For eight years I ate lunch and dinner on a four-penny cheese, a piece of bread, a glass of water, a little coffee.

He was attracted to letters which he read until the late night: Barrès, Renan, Taine, Diderot, Voltaire and Stendhal.

"Paul Léautaud (1872-1956), écrivain, dans sa maison de Fontenay-aux-Roses" is in the Musée Carnavalet, in Paris.

According to Nancy Mitford in The Letters of Nancy Mitford and Evelyn Waugh (p. 251), Leautaud was an eccentric literary critic and diarist who said he loved cats and dogs more than people, lived on nothing but potatoes and cheese for eight years, and never travelled further than Calais.

The novel Le Petit Ami , published in 1903 by Mercure de France, was the first work of Léautaud's to appear under his own name.