Stéphanie-Félicité de Genlis

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Standard Name: Genlis, Stéphanie-Félicité de
Birth Name: Caroline Stéphanie Félicité Ducrest
Married Name: Caroline Stéphanie Félicité de Genlis
Titled: Caroline Stéphanie Félicité, comtesse de Genlis
Used Form: Stephanie-Felicite de Genlis
Used Form: Stéphanie-Félicité de Genlis, Countess of Genlis and Marchioness of Sillery
SFG , French aristocrat, royal mistress, and later a political refugee in England, made her mark as an educational theorist and writer for children (plays, stories, and good advice) during the decade leading up to the French Revolution. She also published adult novels, romances, and an autobiography. In England at least it was her writing for children that was admired and influential.
Painting of Stéphanie-Félicité de Genlis by Adélaïde Labille-Guiard, 1790. She is seated in a green upholstered chair, her arms folded on her lap, one hand holding a small fan. She wears light green gloves, a blue silk dress with layers of neckerchiefs and a lacy bow at the neck. Her curly, powdered hair is partly covered by a lace bonnet with huge silvery bows.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Education Sydney Owenson, Lady Morgan
Their father sent them there so that, following his wife's death and his bankruptcy, he could join a travelling company. At this Huguenot, French-speaking school they met the daughters of politician Henry Grattan and those...
Education Fanny Kemble
Fanny's reading here was important to her. She later regarded her close knowledge of the Bible as the greatest benefit I derived from my school training,
Kemble, Fanny. Records of a Girlhood. Henry Holt.
81
though she condemned the writings of Stéphanie-Félicité de Genlis
Family and Intimate relationships Lady Cynthia Asquith
LCA 's mother, Mary , Lady Wemyss, was born a Wyndham, a descendent of the writer Félicité, Mme de Genlis , and of her royal lover Philippe Egalité , Duc d'Orléans (who was also father...
Family and Intimate relationships Ada Leverson
AL 's daughter, Violet , married Major Guy Wyndham in June 1923; they had two children.
Speedie, Julie. Wonderful Sphinx: The Biography of Ada Leverson. Virago.
260, 262
Apart from her life of her mother, she published biographies of James Scott, Duke of Monmouth and...
Family and Intimate relationships Elizabeth Meeke
Her husband no longer had any duty to support her. At this time he was in Paris, making a living as an English teacher among the offspring of the French nobility, under the patronage...
Fictionalization Lady Eleanor Butler
Among many less formal honours during the ladies' lifetimes, the most extraordinary was LEB 's award of a French, ancien régime, military medal: the Croix St Louis. It is shown in a famous portrait of...
Friends, Associates Sydney Owenson, Lady Morgan
On her first visit to Paris, she met Germaine de Staël , and formed lasting friendships with the marquise de Villette (Voltaire 's adopted daughter) and with Elizabeth Patterson (an American heiress, the abandoned...
Friends, Associates Helen Maria Williams
In Paris HMW frequented Mme Roland 's salon, and she and Stone became close friends of Roland and her husband . Those who visited HMW early in her time in Paris included Mary Wollstonecraft (who...
Friends, Associates Lady Eleanor Butler
Stéphanie-Félicité de Genlis was at Plas Newydd in 1792 with her daughter (or reputed daughter) Pamela; and six years later, in May 1798, Pamela (now Lady Edward Fitzgerald ) was there again, putting a strain...
Friends, Associates Emily Eden
EE 's friends included George Villiers (Lord Clarendon) and his sister Lady Theresa Villiers (later Lewis), and Pamela Fitzgerald (later Lady Campbell) .
Lady Campbell was the daughter of romantically-associated parents: Lord Edward Fitzgerald ...
Friends, Associates Maria Edgeworth
While she was in Paris ME met the now elderly and impoverished Mme de Genlis , whose Adèle et Théodore she had translated in her early teens.
Butler, Marilyn. Maria Edgeworth: A Literary Biography. Clarendon.
197
Intertextuality and Influence Maria Edgeworth
The appearance of a rival translation (by some Ladies, unidentified, who had turned their polite accomplishments into earning skills as a result of falling into comparative poverty from ease and opulence) pre-empted publication...
Intertextuality and Influence Hannah More
HM sent a copy to Stéphanie-Félicité de Genlis , from whose bible plays, as she acknowledged in the accompanying letter, she had taken her generic idea.
Dow, Gillian. “The British Reception of Madame de Genlis’s Writings for Children: Plays and Tales of Instruction and Delight”. Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies, Vol.
29
, No. 3, pp. 367-81.
375
Her volume (full title Sacred Dramas: chiefly intended...
Intertextuality and Influence Anne Bannerman
The contents included odes, sonnets (including one sequence from Petrarch and another based on Goethe 's Werther, in which she speaks as the male lover of a woman, with notes relating her poems to...
Intertextuality and Influence Anna Letitia Barbauld
She also wrote for school performance two short plays of slily political import, perhaps after reading Genlis 's Théâtre à l'usage des jeunes personnes, 1780. She must have enjoyed dramatic writing, since after seeing...

Timeline

1756: Jeanne Le Prince de Beaumont published Le...

Writing climate item

1756

Jeanne Le Prince de Beaumont published Le Magasin des enfants, a collection containing the first influential and literary formulation of the popular fairy storyBeauty and the Beast.

1774: Louise d'Epinay, former friend and patron...

Writing climate item

1774

Louise d'Epinay , former friend and patron of Rousseau , published Conversations d'Emilie, a book on education for girls designed to counter the message of his Emile.

4 June 1798: Lord Edward Fitzgerald, a leader of the United...

National or international item

4 June 1798

Lord Edward Fitzgerald , a leader of the United Irishmen and implicated in the ongoing Irish Rebellion, died in Newgate Prison, Dublin, of the effects of a wound sustained while resisting arrest.

1799: French novelist Sophie de Cottin published...

Writing climate item

1799

French novelist Sophie de Cottin published the first of her five highly popular novels, Claire d'Albe.

Texts

Genlis, Stéphanie-Félicité de. Adèle et Théodore. M. Lambert et F.J. Baudouin, 1782.
Genlis, Stéphanie-Félicité de. Drames sacrés à l’usage des jeunes personnes. Libraires associées, 1775.
Genlis, Stéphanie-Félicité de. Les chevaliers du cygne. Lemierre, 1795.
Genlis, Stéphanie-Félicité de. Les petits émigrés. Onfroy; Fr. De Lagarde, 1798.
Genlis, Stéphanie-Félicité de. Les veillées du château. M. Lambert, 1784.
Genlis, Stéphanie-Félicité de. Les voeux téméraires. Belin, 1798.
Genlis, Stéphanie-Félicité de. Mémoires inédits de madame la comtesse de Genlis. Ladvocat, 1825.
Genlis, Stéphanie-Félicité de. The Child of Nature. Translator Inchbald, Elizabeth, G. G. J. and J. Robinson, 1788.
Genlis, Stéphanie-Félicité de. The Theatre of Education. Translators Starke, Mariana and Millecent Thomas, J. Walker, 1787.
Genlis, Stéphanie-Félicité de. Théâtre à l’usage des jeunes personnes. M. Lambert and F.J. Baudouin, 1780.