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 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, 1879.
81
though she condemned the writings of Stéphanie-Félicité de Genlis
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...
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, 1993.
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...
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...
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 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, 1972.
197
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...
Intertextuality and Influence Mary Wollstonecraft
MW was replying to a number of authoritative male texts about the nature of women: by Burke (who in Reflections on the Revolution in France had glorified Marie-Antoinette and dismissed non-queenly femininity as animal), Rousseau
Intertextuality and Influence Clara Reeve
In this ground-breaking study CR provides the first full critical and historical account of the modern novel form (the one most used by women writers), and defends the genre of romance against its many attackers...
Intertextuality and Influence Mary Martha Sherwood
MMS began making up stories in her sixth year, but wrote later, what they were I have not the least idea. I was too young to write them down; but when I had thought of...
Intertextuality and Influence Mary Anne Schimmelpenninck
The pamphlet (of which other, later translations also exist) had in MAS 's version notes by Lewis Way , an Evangelical Anglican who had travelled in Russia and met the Tsar. It concentrates on Alexander's...

Timeline

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 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 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 the first of her five highly popular novels, Claire d'Albe.