1840 births

Wilhelm Heinrich Erb (30 November 1840 – 29 October 1921) was a German neurologist. He was born in Winnweiler, and died in Heidelberg.

Jean-Charles Cazin (25 May 1840 – 17 March 1901) was a French landscapist, museum curator and ceramicist.

Blanche d'Antigny (9 May 1840 – 30 June 1874) was a French singer, actress and courtesan whose fame today rests chiefly on the fact that Émile Zola used her as the principal model for his novel Nana.

Marie-Thérèse Blanc, better known by the pseudonym Thérèse Bentzon (21 September 1840 – 1907), was a French journalist, essayist and novelist, for many years on the staff of the Revue des Deux Mondes. She was born at Seine-Port, Seine-et-Marne, a small village near Paris, traveled widely in the United States, and wrote of American literature and social conditions.

Louis-Émile Bertin (23 March 1840 – 22 October 1924) was a French naval engineer, one of the foremost of his time, and a proponent of the "Jeune École" philosophy of using light, but powerfully armed warships instead of large battleships.

Alphonse Daudet (French: [dodɛ]; 13 May 1840 – 16 December 1897) was a French novelist. He was the husband of Julia Daudet and father of Edmée, Léon and Lucien Daudet.

Achille Edmond Audran (12 April 1840 – 17 August 1901) was a French composer best known for several internationally successful comic operas and operettas.
After beginning his career in Marseille as an organist, Audran composed religious music and began to write works for the stage in the 1860s and 1870s. Among these, Le grand mogol (1877) was the most popular and was later revived in Paris, London and New York. In 1879 he moved to Paris, where some of his pieces achieved considerable success both in France and abroad, including Les noces d'Olivette (1879), La mascotte (1880), Gillette de Narbonne (1882), La cigale et la fourmi (1886), Miss Helyett (1890) and La poupée (1896).
Most of his works are now neglected, but La mascotte has been revived occasionally and has been recorded for the gramophone.