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
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Sarah Green
M. G. Lewis is a more complicated case, treated with some nuance. SG admires The Monk but feels that after that Lewis's real talent was obscured by the baneful influence of German fiction: she agrees...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Sydney Owenson, Lady Morgan
Morgan describes chiefly Paris and its society, ostensibly on the model of Germaine de Staël 's L'Allemagne. She does indeed include French culture centrally among her topics: she criticises the works of Corneille and...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Julia Kavanagh
In her preface JK explains her interest in the rise of the novel and argues that novels have become the teachers for good or for evil of many; their power can be exalted or deplored—it...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Elizabeth Sophia Tomlins
Her protagonist, Theresa Morven, has until three years before the story opens been buried in a French convent at the behest of her stepmother, whom, however, she steadfastly refuses to hate. (Her own mother died...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Melesina Trench
About the first twenty pages are occupied by MT 's early reminiscences, probably written not long after her first husband's death: she frankly recorded her emotional disturbance over that event.
Trench, Melesina. The Remains of the Late Mrs. Richard Trench. Editor Trench, Richard Chenevix, Parker and Bourn.
18
Later pages mix letters...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Elizabeth, Margravine of Anspach
EMA goes into some detail about the French court and royal family from the time that she lived at Versailles, pausing too to do justice to the talents of Madame Genlis, if only in...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Jane Austen
In letters JA did not restrain her pen: no detail about food or dress was too trivial for her to report, no comment on neighbours and acquaintances too scathing for her to permit herself. Her...
Textual Production Ann Hatton
AH continued to write after she and her husband returned from North America. The ODNB mentions her anonymous story The Unknown, or, The Knight of the Blood-Red Plume in a collection called Welsh Legends...
Textual Production Amelia Opie
At about the same date she published several Recollections of an Authoress in Chambers's Edinburgh Journal. Each of these dealt with a particular author she had known, including Stéphanie-Félicité de Genlis and Sir Walter Scott .
Opie, Amelia. “Introduction”. The Collected Poems of Amelia Alderson Opie, edited by Shelley King and John B. Pierce, Oxford University Press, p. xxxvii - lxx.
lv
Textual Production Elizabeth Inchbald
Most of EI 's plays employ common sentimental comedic plots of marriage choice and sexual intrigue. Set in England and various other countries, they often open with the reappearance of some character from overseas: in...
Textual Production Elizabeth Inchbald
The source was Zélie; ou, L'Ingénue by Stéphanie-Félicité de Genlis . The adaptation was published on 12 December.
Textual Production Eliza Parsons
It shared the bill (which was given for the benefit of actress Isabella Mattocks ) with Elizabeth Inchbald 's The Child of Nature (adapted from Genlis ) and The Soldier's Festival; or, The Night before...
Textual Production Mary Anne Schimmelpenninck
Its fuller title is Asaph; or The Herrnhutters; being a rhythmical sketch of the principle events, and most remarkable institutions in the modern history of the Church of the Unitas Fratrum, commonly called Moravians;...
Textual Production Mariana Starke
A version of children's plays by Stéphanie-Félicité de Genlis , The Theatre of Education. A New Translation from the French, appears to be the anonymous work of MS and the little-known Millecent Thomas (formerly Parkhurst).
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.
369
Pitcher, Edward W. “Mariana Starke and Millecent Thomas: Early Translators of Genlis’s <span data-tei-ns-tag="tei_title" data-tei-title-lvl=‘m’>Le théâtre à l’usage des jeunes personnes (1779-1780)</span&gt”;. Notes and Queries, Vol.
45 (243)
, No. 1, pp. 81-2.
81-2
Textual Production Mariana Starke
It seems that she had begun to learn stagecraft in translating from Stéphanie-Félicité de Genlis . The comedy was anonymously published in the year of its performance; a Dublin and another London edition quickly followed...

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.