He was a member of the Académie Française from 1877 and a prolific French playwright, as well as a psychographic medium who worked with Allan Kardec. He was born and died in Paris (5 September 1831 – 8 November 1908). He abandoned medicine, drawn to literature. He was born for the theatre. He possessed a gift for movement, vitality and natural dialogue. His plays were skilfully constructed. He wrote 578 works, including *La Famille Benoîton* and *L’Oncle Sam*, comedies of intrigue and of manners. *Madame Sans-Gêne*, *La Tosca*, *Thermidor* and *Patrie* are among his most notable dramatic works.

His first play, *La Taverne des Étudiants*, was staged at the Odéon but met with little success. *Rabagas* went on to become his best-known work. He also produced opera librettos and wrote, amongst other works, texts on Spiritism, as well as mediumistic drawings. Amongst the latter, the following stand out: *The Drawings of Jupiter*, produced by the Spirit Bernard Palissy, Paris, 1858. Kardec, when referring to this work, is not concerned with the authenticity of the description, as he does not concern himself with what happens in other worlds, and asks that it not be forgotten that his aim is, above all, the study of the phenomenon (*Revista Espírita*, August 1858).

Victorien Sardou, in his explanatory article ‘Dwellings on Jupiter’, notes that for certain people convinced of the existence of spirits, such as ourselves, it must be a source of wonder that spirits have their own dwellings and cities (Revista Espírita, August 1858). He was one of the most ardent adherents of Spiritism and a medium favoured by communications from higher spirits (Revista Espírita, March 1859 – ‘Family Talks’).

He was one of Kardec’s mediums at the Société Parisienne des Études Spirites, founded in Paris on 1 April 1858, alongside Camille Flammarion and Pierre-Gaëtan Leymarie. Sardou told the editor of *Éclair* that, upon entering Spiritist circles, one of the people he met in Mr Roustan’s salon on Rue Tiquetonne was Allan Kardec, when the future Codifier of Spiritism was still merely a curious onlooker.