Ponson du Trail: French novelist, best known for his writings on adventure literature. Alex Ponson de Trail was born in 1829 in Montmartre, France. Known for his prolific literary production, he produced seventy-three volumes in twenty years. His early fiction belonged to Gothic literature, and when he began writing the Rocamball Series he published it in a daily newspaper, a series of stories belonging to mystery and adventure literature, which represented his transition from Gothic literature to heroic modernist literature. Ponson du Trail died in 1871