a French journalist, translator and popular historian. Known today for his quarrels with Voltaire, Desfontaines can be regarded as the founder of the new literary criticism and journalism in France, insofar as he sought to found his criticism on aesthetic and ethical lines, rather than merely summarising, reproducing or paraphrasing. He then published, with various collaborators such as Élie Fréron, Granet, the Abbé Destrées, periodical collections of criticism.
