Victorien Sardou (September 5, 1831 - November 8, 1908) was a French dramatist. He is perhaps best remembered today for the play La Tosca (1887) on which Giacomo Puccini's opera Tosca (1900) is based. The fedora hat is named after another of his plays. He was born in Paris. The Sardous were settled at Le Cannet, a village near Cannes, where they owned an estate, planted with olive trees. A night's frost killed all the trees and the family was ruined. Victorien's father, Antoine Léandre Sardou, came to Paris in search of employment. He was in succession a book-keeper at a commercial establishment, a professor of book-keeping, the head of a provincial school, then a private tutor and a schoolmaster in Paris, besides editing grammars, dictionaries and treatises on various subjects. With all these occupations, he hardly succeeded in making a livelihood, and when he retired to his native country, Victorien was left on his own resources. He had begun studying medicine, but had to desist for want of funds. He taught French to foreign pupils: he also gave lessons in Latin, history and mathematics to students, and wrote articles for cheap encyclopaedias. M. Sardou married his benefactress, Mlle de Brécourt, but eight years later he became a widower, and soon after the Revolution of 1870 was married a second time, to Mlle Soulié, the daughter of the erudite Eudore Soulié, who for many years superintended the Musée de Versailles. He was elected to the Académie française in the room of the poet Joseph Autran (1813-1877), and took his seat on May 22 1878. He died at Paris on November 8, 1908. (via Wikipedia)