Paul Lacroix

Paul Lacroix 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.

Lacroix was born in Paris, the son of a novelist. He was a prolific and varied writer, composing more than twenty historical romances as well as 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. She lived with Paul Lacroix's collaborator, art collector Théophile Thoré-Bürger, for more than a decade until his death.