1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Gérault-Richard, Alfred Léon

GÉRAULT-RICHARD, ALFRED LÉON (1860–  ), French journalist and politician, was born at Bonnétable in the department of Sarthe, of a peasant family. He began life as a working upholsterer, first at Mans, then at Paris (1880), where his peasant and socialist songs soon won him fame in the Montmartre quarter. Lissagaray, the communist, offered him a position on La Bataille, and he became a regular contributor to the advanced journals, especially to La Petite République, of which he became editor-in-chief in 1897. In 1893 he founded Le Chambard, and was imprisoned for a year (1894) on account of a personal attack upon the president, Casimir-Périer. In January 1895 he was elected to the chamber as a Socialist for the thirteenth arrondissement of Paris. He was defeated at the elections of 1898 at Paris, but was re-elected in 1902 and in 1906 by the colony of Guadeloupe.