Joseph de La Porte
Joseph de La Porte, (baptised 19 January 1714 in Belfort – died 19 December 1779) was an 18th-century French priest, literary critic, poet and playwright. A member of the Society of Jesus, abbot de La Porte first worked to some periodical publications, in society with Fréron and, among others, with "". Temporarily in bad relation with Fréron, abbot de La Porte began in 1758 to publish "l'Observateur littéraire". The first sheet of this periodical for the year 1761, including Voltaire, implacable enemy of Freron, speaking of "a masterpiece of its kind," contained an article on "l’Année littéraire , a newspaper where Father La Porte saw a designed plot consisting of censorship, debasing, and decrying the masterpieces, and placing our most famous writers below more obscure literators." A prolific author, abbot de La Porte also wrote a large number of books and compilations. His first writing was the "Voyage au séjour des ombres", critical book that had some success. He then made a periodical entitled "Observations sur la littérature moderne" as it applied to contradict Fréron. His compilation of world travels "LE VOYAGEUR FRANÇAIS, ou la connaissance de l'ancien et du nouveau monde" (THE FRENCH TRAVELER, or the knowledge  of the old and the new world), is a fiction based in real voyages. The author was never a traveler, he was an expert in travel literature. Rather than telling other people's travels, La Porte chooses another formula: he introduces himself as "the Traveler", and, writing letters from his places of residence to a certain "Madame", uses Traveler Relations, real those, to furnish her souvenirs in her dressing-gown. And he pepper his story of the meeting of some other characters. And due to its objectivity, many historians have cited him as a primary source, when his text is  of secondary or referential source.