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Son to a lawyer from Marseille, Alfred Capus went to university in Toulon. After failing several entrance tests for higher-education schools and working as a draughtsman for a while, he went on to become a journalist.

One of his first articles was an obituary of Darwin. He went on to write funny pieces for papers such as Gaulois, L'Écho de Paris and L'Illustration. He also wrote for Le Figaro, under the penname of Graindorge. In 1914, he became the editor of Figaro. During the First World War he would write stridently patriotic pieces.

On 12 February 1914, he became a member of the Académie française.

In 1878 he published, in collaboration with L Vonoven, a volume of short stories, and in the next year the two produced a one-act piece, Le Mari malgre lui, at the Théâtre Cluny.

His novels, Qui perd gagne (1890), Faux Depart (1891), Année des d'aventures (1895), which belong to this period, describe the struggles of three young men at the beginning of their career. From the first of these he took his first comedy, Brignol et sa fille (Vaudeville, November 23, 1894).

The German film Leontines Ehemänner ("Leontine's Husbands"), released in 1928 and starring Claire Rommer, Georg Alexander, Adele Sandrock and Truus van Aalten, was adapted from Capus 1900 comedy Les Maris de Leontine.

Plays

• (1896), written with Alphonse Allais
• (1897)
• (1897)
• (1898)
• (1900)
• (1900)
• (1901)
• (1901) (the basis of the 1921 comédie musicale La petite fonctionnaire)
• (1902)
• (1902)
• (1903), with Emmanuel Arène, which was produced in London by George Alexander as The Man of the Moment
• (1904), the first of his plays to be performed at the Théâtre Français
• (1905)
• (1906), written with Lucien Descaves

Novels

• (1890)
• (1891)
• (1910)