André de Latour, comte de Lorde was a French playwright, the main author of the Grand Guignol plays from 1901-1926. His evening career was as a dramatist of terror; during daytimes he worked as a librarian in the Bibliothèque de l'Arsenal. He wrote 150 plays, all of them devoted mainly to the exploitation of terror and insanity, and a few novels. For plays the subject matter of which concerned mental illness he sometimes collaborated with psychologist Alfred Binet, the developer of IQ testing.

During the 1920s de Lorde was elected "Prince of Fear" (Prince de la Terreur) by his peers.