Pierre Dupont wasa poet and songwriter from a working-class family. Having won a competition organized by the Académie française, he got a job at the Dictionary, which enabled him to rub shoulders with the literary and artistic circles around Courbet and Murger. He wrote a great number of famous songs, including "Les Bœufs" ("The Oxen"), which Gounod set to music. He often wrote the music for his songs himself, despite never having studied it. Starting in 1851, he published four volumes of Chants and Songs illustrated by Tony Johannot, Célestin Nanteuil and many other talented illustrators. Charles Baudelaire wrote the foreword, saluting the poet's political commitment (The Workers' Chant, The Peasants' Chant, etc.), a text that he later tempered, athough he never entirely broke off the friendship.
Dupont's anti-Royalist stance led to his being convicted to seven years of exile after a coup d'état, although the sentence was overturned thanks to the help of some influential people.