Philippe du Puy de Clinchamps

Philippe du Puy de Clinchamps (2 January 1913 – 3 March 1971) was a French author of works on the nobility, some of which are still republished today, but also a novelist and journalist.

Biography

Philippe du Puy de Clinchamps was born in Nice. He joined L'Aurore as a reporter, then from 1951 directed the magazine L'Intermédiaire des chercheurs et curieux (ICC), founded in 1864 by Charles Read, and of which he helped to relaunch a new series.

In 1954, he launched the collection Cahiers nobles (a series printed in 666 copies and some in only 444 copies), which brought together, in thirty-seven issues and twenty titles, fourteen authors on the subject of nobility. He signed under the pseudonyms of "Antoine Bouch" and especially "Charondas". One of the booklets is devoted, for example, to the Jockey-Club de Paris, considered at the time and for several generations as one of the most aristocratic clubs in France, and he analyzes the noble past, or not, of the families of the members of this club. In 1957, he published the Cahier noir, which lists families of the French bourgeoisie with a particle or who bear false titles of nobility, giving a short genealogical summary of each family's history.

He is the author of several works, including volumes from the Que sais-je? collection, on the themes of nobility and chivalry. He reveals through his work leanings favorable to Orleanism. This is how he designates the members of the Orléans family, pretenders to the throne of France, by their first name and theoretical sovereign number, from 1883, the date of the death of Henri V, and not by their patronymic name.

In addition, he was the director, from the post-war period, of the detective literature collection La Mauvaise Chance published by Athéné/Portulan. Here again, he used different pseudonyms. Thus, under the pseudonym "Franz-Rudolph Falk", presented as a German writer, he published five detective novels supposedly translated into French by "Philippe Géry". Under this last pseudonym, he authored a spy novel. The Dictionnaire des littératures policières describes "these novels of great lyricism (which) stand out from the post-war production. Their strange tones make them singular works in our detective literature".

He died in 1971 in a car accident in Lorraine.

His son, Patrice du Puy de Clinchamps (born in 1945) is also a journalist and writer. In September 2004, he launched the publishing house Patrice du Puy-Éditeur, which took over from ICC-Éditions, whose publishing activity, since 1954, was linked to the magazine L'Intermédiaire des chercheurs et curieux.

Works

• Cahiers nobles (1950)
• Un juge d'armes au Jockey-club (1954; 2000)
• Le Cahier noir (1957; 2015)
• La Noblesse (1959; 1996)
• La Chevalerie (1961)
• Les Grandes Dynasties (1965)
• Le Snobisme (1966)
• À quel titre? (1970)
• Le Royalisme (1981)

Crime fiction

Under the pen name Franz-Rudolph Falk

• On a tué pendant l'escale (1945)
• L'homme m'a raconté... (1946)
• Nous, les assassins (1947)
• Les corbeaux croassent sur la ville (1947)
• Les Pendus de peu d'importance (1948)

Under the pen name Philippe Géry

• Un prince d'autrefois (1958)

Filmography

• Le Paltoquet (1986), film directed by Michel Deville based on the novel On a tué pendant l'escale (1945).

References

• Mesplède, Claude (2007). Dictionnaire des littératures policières, vol. 1: A - I. Nantes: Joseph K, p. 443.

External links

• Works by Philippe du Puy de Clinchamps at Gallica