Adolphe Belot

Louis Marc Adolphe Belot was a French playwright and novelist. He was born on 6 November 1829 in Pointe-à-Pitre, and died on 18 December 1890 in Paris. Adolphe Belot was the son of an attorney employed by the Pointe-à-Pitre court. Born in Le Havre, France, Belot was raised in the metropolis at the Sainte-Barbe college before obtaining his license at the Faculty of Law in Paris. In 1854, he was registered by the board of lawyers of Nancy.

After several trips to the Americas, he devoted himself to writing, publishing Le Châtiment in 1855 before approaching the theater with the comedy À la Campagne in 1857. In 1859, in collaboration with Charles Edmond Villetard de Prunières, he wrote Le Testament de César Girodot, a show which was performed over 500 times at the Odéon theater.

Belot wrote the novel Mademoiselle Giraud, My Wife in 1870, centered around a naive young man and his eponymous wife who refuses to consummate their marriage. The book achieved was an immense success, selling at least 66,000 copies and has been published in 33 editions around the world.

Belot died of pulmonary congestion at the age of 61, on the 18th of December, 1890.

Belot fathered two daughters: Marthe and Jeanne, the latter of which became an actress at the Odéon theatre under the pseudonym of "Miss Belly". She died of typhoid fever in January 1899.