Victor Henri-Joseph Brahain du Cange (or Ducange) (November 24, 1783 – October 15, 1833) was a French novelist and dramatist, born at the Hague, where his father was secretary to the French embassy.
Dismissed from the civil service at the Restoration, Ducange became one of the favorite authors of the liberal party, and owed some part of his popularity to the fact that he was fined and imprisoned more than once for his outspokenness. He was six months in prison for an article in his journal Le Diable rose, ou le petit courrier de Lucifer (1822); for Valentine (1821), in which the royalist excesses in the south of France were pilloried, he was again imprisoned; and after the publication of Hélène ou l'amour et la guerre (1823), he took refuge for some time in Belgium.
Ducange wrote numerous plays and melodramas, among which the most successful were Marco Loricot, ou le petit Chouan de 1830 (1836), and Trente ans, ou la vie d'un joueur (1827), in which Frédérick Lemaître found one of his best parts. Many of his books were prohibited, ostensibly for their coarseness, but perhaps rather for their political tendencies. He died in Paris.
Theatre
1813: Palmerin, ou le Solitaire des Gaules, in three acts
1813: Pharamond, ou l’Entrée des Francs dans les Gaules, in three acts
1818: Le Prince de Norvège, ou la Bague de fer, in three acts
1819: Le Prisonnier vénitien, in three acts, with Dupetit-Méré
1819: Calas, in three acts
1819: La Tante à marier, one-act comédie en vaudeville
1819: La Maison du Corrégidor, ou Ruse et malice, in three acts
1820: Le Colonel et le Soldat, in three acts
1820: Thérèse, ou l’Orpheline de Genève, in three acts
1821: La Suédoise, in three acts
1822: Élodie, ou la Vierge du monastère, in three acts
1823: Lisbeth, in three acts
1824: Les Diamants, in three acts
1826: Mac Doivell, in three acts
1828: Polder, ou le Bourreau d’Amsterdam, with Pixérécourt, in three acts
1828: La Fiancée de Lammermoor, in three acts
1829: Sept heures ou Charlotte Corday, three-act melodrama with Auguste Anicet-Bourgeois, Théâtre de la Porte-Saint-Martin
1830: Le Jésuite, with Pixérécourt, en trois actes
1831: La Vendetta, ou la Fiancée corse, in three acts
1831: Il y a seize ans, in three acts
1831: l’Oiseau bleu, with Simonnin, two-act féerie
Novels
1819: Agathe, ou le Petit Vieillard de Calais, Paris, 2 vol. in-12°
1820: Albert, ou les Amants missionnaires, 2 vol. in-12°
1820: Valentine ou le Pasteur d'Uzès, (this work in which he condemned the massacres of 1815, earned him seven months in jail.)
1823: Léonide, ou la Vieille de Suresnes, 5 vol. in-12°
1825: La Luthérienne, 6 vol. in-12°
1825: Le Médecin confesseur, 6 vol. in-12°
1826: Les Trois Filles de la Veuve, 6 vol. in-12°
1827: L’Artiste et le Soldat, 5 vol, in-12°
1830: Isaurine, 5 vol. in-12°
1830: Ludovica, 6 vol. in-12°
1832: Marc Loricot, 6 vol. in-12°
1834: Les Mœurs, tales and short stories, 2 vol. in-12°
1835: Joasine, ou la Fille du prêtre, 5 vol, in-12°