Napoleon as Novelist

Napoleon Bonaparte might have even more to answer for than we ever suspected. According to The Guardian, along with his many ambitions and accomplishments, the doomed French emperor has just been revealed as perhaps the very first progenitor of chick lit.

Napoleon is already credited with writing some of the most romantic -- or revolting, depending on your sensibilities -- words in his urgent message to Josephine: “Will return to Paris tomorrow evening. Don’t wash.”

Now the man the world knows as emperor, war hero and bogeyman, the ruthlessly ambitious Little Corporal who rose from provincial obscurity in Corsica to become the terror or ruler of half the world, will be revealed in a surprising new guise: Napoleon the failed romantic novelist.

The Guardian reveals how this all came about here.