SOURCE: "theatrical Censorship in France, 1844-1875: The Experience of Victor Séjour," in Harvard Library Bulletin, Vol. XXVI, No. 4, October 1978, pp. 417-41.

In the excerpt below, O'Neill traces Séjour's experiences with the French censors

A free man of color born in New Orleans in 1817, Victor Séjour enjoyed a fascinating thirty-year career as a playwright in Paris. With Diégarias, staged by the national Théâtre Français in 1844, he made his début. More than twenty of his plays followed on the stages of Paris, including La Chute de Séjan (1848), which ran for three and one half months, and Le Fils de la Nuit (1856), dedicated to his friend Alexandre Dumas the Elder, which was the most successful of all. His Cromwell was played in 1875, seven months after the playwright's death in September 1874.

His life and work link Haiti, whence his father came; Louisiana, his own...