19th-century French historians

François Lenormant (17 January 1837 – 9 December 1883) was a 19th-century French Hellenist, Assyriologist and archaeologist.

Frantz Funck-Brentano (15 June 1862 – 13 June 1947) was a French historian and librarian. He was born in the castle of Munsbach (Luxembourg) and died at Montfermeil. He was a son of Théophile Funck-Brentano.

Paul Lacroix (French: [lakʁwa]; 27 February 1806 – 16 October 1884) 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.

Auguste Jal (12 April 1795, in Lyon – 5 April 1873) was a French author who wrote on maritime archaeology and history.

Gustave Lanson (5 August 1857 – 15 December 1934) was a French historian and literary critic. He taught at the Sorbonne and the École Normale Supérieure in Paris. A dominant figure in French literary criticism, he influenced several generations of writers and critics through his teachings, which were anti-systematic and promoted a scrupulous and erudite approach to texts via extensive firsthand research, inventorying, and in-depth historical investigation.

François Victor Alphonse Aulard (19 July 1849 – 23 October 1928) was the first professional French historian of the French Revolution and of Napoleon. His major achievement was to institutionalise and professionalise the practice of history in France. He argued:

From the social point of view, the Revolution consisted in the suppression of what was called the feudal system, in the emancipation of the individual, in greater division of landed property, the abolition of the privileges of noble birth, the establishment of equality, the simplification of life. [...] The French Revolution differed from other revolutions in being not merely national, for it aimed at benefiting all humanity.

Bruno Paulin Gaston Paris (French pronunciation: [ɡastɔ̃ paʁis]; 9 August 1839 – 5 March 1903) was a French literary historian, philologist, and scholar specialized in Romance studies and medieval French literature. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1901, 1902, and 1903.

Albert Sorel (13 August 1842 – 29 June 1906) was a French historian. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature nine times.

Pierre Laffitte (21 February 1823 – 4 January 1903) was a French positivist philosopher.
Laffitte was born at Béguey, Gironde. Residing at Paris as a teacher of mathematics, he became a disciple of Auguste Comte, who appointed him his literary executor. On the schism of the Positivist body which followed Comte's death, he was recognized as head of the section which accepted the full Comtian doctrine; the other section adhered to Émile Littré, who rejected the religion of humanity as inconsistent with the philosophy of science of Comte's earlier period. From 1853 Laffitte delivered Positivist lectures in the room formerly occupied by Comte in the rue Monsieur le Prince. He published Les Grands Types de l'humanité (1875) and Cours de philosophie première (1889). In 1893 he was appointed to the new chair founded at the Collège de France for the exposition of the general history of science, and it was largely due to his inspiration that a statue to Comte was erected in the Place de la Sorbonne in 1902. Laffitte died in Paris.
Lafitte with a delegation of positivists visited Constantinople in 1877 visited Midhat Pasha to advocate positivist principles as a non-Christian, modern system.

Ernest Lavisse (French: [lavis]; 17 December 1842 – 18 August 1922) was a French historian. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature five times. Lavisse is also known for being one of the main creator of the roman national ("National myth", lit. "national novel"), thank to his history schoolbooks.