Pierre-Louis Ginguené

He hailed the first symptoms of the French Revolution, and joined Giuseppe Cerutti, the author of the Mémoire pour le peuple français (1788), and others in producing the Feuille villageoise, a weekly paper addressed to the villages of France.

After his release he assisted, as director-general of the "commission exécutive de l'instruction publique", in reorganizing the system of public instruction, and he was an original member of the Institute of France.

He was appointed a member of the tribunate, but Napoleon, finding that he was not sufficiently tractable, had him expelled at the first "purge", and Ginguené returned to his literary pursuits.

In the composition of his history of Italian literature he was guided for the most part by the great work of Girolamo Tiraboschi, but he avoids the prejudices and party views of his model.

He contributed largely to the Biographie universelle, the Mercure de France and the Encyclopidie méthodique; and he edited the works of Nicolas Chamfort and of Lebrun.