Émile Théodore Léon Gautier (8 August 1832 – 25 August 1897) was a French literary historian. He was born at Le Havre, France. He was educated at the École des Chartes, and became successively head of the archives of the département of Haute-Marne (1856) and archivist at the Imperial Archives in Paris (1859). In 1874 he became a professor of palaeography at the École des Chartes. He was elected a member of the Academy of Inscriptions in 1887, and became chief of the historical section of the National Archives in 1893.