Gustave Le Rouge (1867-1938)

"Friend of mandrakes, alchemists, utopians and gypsies. An intimate of Paul Verlaine's, whose last meal on earth he shared. Shipwrecked survivor of the Symbolist movement, despite four novels (never published, but with titles full of promise): The Inexorable Teats, The Wandering Revolt, Death of the Watchmen, Winged Sepulchres.
Farmer and journalist in Tunisia... Stage author, screenwriter, circus presenter. Passionately interested in chemistry and gastronomy (Old France at the Table)... radical-socialist... Member of a conspiracy (failed) against the king of Belgium. Spouse of a circus horsewoman; then of a disfigured clairvoyant. Science fiction pioneer with The Prisoner of Planet Mars, The War of the Vampires, The Princess of Heavens, The Conspiracy of the Billionaires. Author of books on the language of dreams and flowers..."

From the intro by Francis Lacassin to the Le Rouge omnibus #1 (Laffont).

I'd first heard him mentioned in relation to Blaise Cendrars' L'homme foudroyé--the main character is basically Le Rouge--but I had no idea how deep the influence went. According to Lacassin, Cendrars would "use" Le Rouge in seven books!--and that's not taking in account the poetry created by decoupage of Le Rouge's Le Mystérieux Docteur Cornélius serial (Cendrars qualified the original as "prose poems").

Well, if any of this sounds interesting, for once there's some luck for readers in English--Brian Stableford (same guy who edited a few of the Dedalus decadent anthologies) has adapted the old French comics of Doctor Cornelius for Black Coat Press

http://www.blackcoatpress.com/fiction-the-mysterious-doctor-cornelius-vol-1.html