1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Capus, Alfred

CAPUS, ALFRED (1858–  ), French author, was born at Aix, in Provence, on the 25th of November 1858. In 1878 he published, in collaboration with L. Vonoven, a volume of short stories, and in the next year the two produced a one-act piece, Le Mari malgré lui, at the Théâtre Cluny. He had been educated as an engineer, but became a journalist, and joined the staff of the Figaro in 1894. His novels, Qui perd gagne (1890), Faux Départ (1891), Années d’aventures (1895), which belong to this period, describe the struggles of three young men at the beginning of their career. From the first of these he took his first comedy, Brignol et sa file (Vaudeville, 23rd November 1894). Among his later plays are Innocent (1896), written with Alphonse Allais; Petites folles (1897); Rosine (1897); Mariage bourgeois (1898); Les Maris de Léontine (1900); La Bourse ou la vie (1900), La Veine (1901); La Petite Fonctionnaire (1901); Les Deux Écoles (1902); La Châtelaine (1902); L’ Adversaire (1903), with Emmanuel Arène, which was produced in London by Mr George Alexander as The Man of the Moment, and Notre Jeunesse (1904), the first of his plays to be represented at the Théâtre Français; Monsieur Piégois (1905); and, in collaboration with Lucien Descaves, L’ Attentat (1906).

See Édouard Quet, Alfred Capus (1904), with appreciations by various authors, in the series of Célébrités d’ aujourd’hui.