His first publication was a novel, "Émile", dealing with his birth and early life, and appeared under the name of Girardin in 1827. He became inspector of fine arts under the Martignac ministry just before the revolution of 1830, and was an energetic and passionate journalist. Besides his work on the daily press he issued miscellaneous publications which attained an enormous circulation. His "Journal des connaissances utiles" had 120,000 subscribers, and the initial edition of his "Almanach de France" (1834) ran to a million copies. He founded the illustrated literary magazine "Musée des familles" in 1833.