Joseph Tastu (Perpignan 1787 – 1849) was the son of Perpignan’s town printer and left for Paris in 1814 to write for opposition or “independent” periodicals such as the Constitutionnel and Nain jaune, and created the Renommée, which was subsequently closed down by the royal police; he also directed the Diable boîteux and Mercure gallant and bought the liberal printing house of Beaudoin brothers. In 1816, he married the French woman of letters and poet Sabine Casimire Amable Voïart, known as Amable Tastu (1798-1885, stepdaughter of Elise Voïart).

Tastu started writing about Romance philology in the 1830s, after he had lost his fortune in the July Revolution. He published a Catalan translation of the poem “Les contrebandiers” by Pierre-Jean de Béranger in Paris in 1833. In 1830, Tastu also undertook to draw up a Catalan grammar book in French – which remained a manuscript – with the aim of disseminating precise knowledge about the Catalan language.

In 1833, Tastu contacted Raynouard and started to contribute to his Lexique roman as an expert on Catalan (spoken in his home region of Roussillon). Besides collaborating with Raynouard and with other French philologists and scholars such as Claude Fauriel and Francis Guessard, Tastu contributed to Torres Amat’s Catalan dictionary and was appointed as correspondent of the Academia de Historia de Madrid, Real Academia de la Buenas Letras de Barcelona, and Academia de Ciencias y Artes de Mallorca. From March 1837 until June 1838, he travelled to Catalonia and the Balearic Islands to collect documents on Catalan and Spanish history and literature. He also collected plaster moulds, faiences, and geological samples from Mallorca, as well as ancient Spanish and Catalan manuscripts, for the French Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres. George Sand drew on the Mallorca trip of Tastu (with whom she was in touch) for her Un hiver a Majorque.

In France, Tastu endorsed Ballot’s views about the origins of Catalan, considering it an independent language (and thereby challenging Raynouard’s theory that it was a mere derivation of Provençal).