Paul Lacroix
French author (1806-1884)
Paul Lacroix (French: [lakʁwa]; 27 February 1806 – 16 October 1884) was a French author and journalist. He is known best by his pseudonym P.L. Jacob, bibliophile, or Bibliophile Jacob, suggested by his great interest in libraries and books generally.
Biography
Lacroix was born in Paris, the son of a novelist. He was a prolific and varied writer, composing more than twenty historical romances and a variety of serious historical works, including histories of Napoleon III and of the Czar Nicholas I of Russia.
He was the joint author with Ferdinand Séré of a five-volume work, Le moyen âge et la renaissance (1847), a profusely illustrated standard work on the manners, customs and dress of the Renaissance. He also wrote many monographs on phases of the history of culture, including Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period. Someone using the name Pierre Dufour published an exhaustive six-volume Histoire de la prostitution (1851–1854), which has always been attributed to Lacroix. His works concerning bibliography were also numerous, as was his periodical Revue universelle des arts [Universal Review of the Arts], which he initiated in 1855. In 1855 he was appointed librarian of the Arsenal Library, Paris.
He married Apolline Biffe on 7 May 1834.
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The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 2, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1607626. VIAF identifies the subject as 295319910. The Library of Congress control number is n50041327. 3 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 1 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1806, 1884, 1847 and 1851.
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This entry incorporates text from “Paul Lacroix” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.