Marie de Sévigné

05 February 1626 - 17 April 1696

Standard Name: Sévigné, Marie de

Birth Name: Marie de Rabutin-Chantal

Married Name: Marie de Sévigné

Titled: Marie, marquise de Sévigné

Used Form: Marie de Sevigne

MS , who lived and wrote in seventeenth-century France, is widely regarded as one of the world's great letter-writers. The standard scholarly edition contains 1,372 letters.

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Connections

Connections Sort descending	Author name	Excerpt
Education	Marie-Madeleine de Lafayette	Her education was remarkable even for her class. She even studied Hebrew as well as Latin, in which she was tutored along with the girl who later became Madame de Sevigné .
Friends, Associates	Madeleine de Scudéry	Her friends and associates included novelist Marie Madeleine de Lafayette , letter-writer Marie de Sévigné , and maxim-writer La Rochefoucauld .
Intertextuality and Influence	Catherine Gore	Like CG 's Cecil he is a dandy in love with his own looks, which in his case include his exceptionally small size (said to be about that of a full-grown mouse). Of concomitant beauty...
Intertextuality and Influence	Julia O'Faolain	The topics covered in richly informative detail, far too many to enumerate, include a father's life-or-death rights over his offspring in ancient Greece, while such topics as buying and selling sex, or the relation...
Literary responses	Barbarina Brand Baroness Dacre	Lady Dacre's friends called her a Sévigné for her letter-writing, but she told them to destroy her letters. Not all of them complied, but no doubt some of them did. Grey, Barbarina Charlotte, Lady. A Family Chronicle. Editor Lyster, Gertrude, John Murray, 1908. 19-20
Literary responses	Emily Eden	The Times Literary Supplement reviewer praised these letters for humour, richness, spontaneity, and wit. The Spectator reviewer likened them to those of Madame de Sévigné . Nineteenth-Century Literature Criticism. Gale Research, 1981–2025, Numerous volumes. 104
Literary responses	Elizabeth Moody	The Gentleman's Magazine obituary of EM bestowed lavish praise on her letters, comparing them to those of Marie de Sévigné . Gentleman’s Magazine. Various publishers. 84 (1814): 2: 613
Publishing	Arabella Shore	In addition to her poetry, AS published at least three significant pieces of literary criticism: essays on the contemporary, active George Meredith and on Marie de Sévigné for the British Quarterly Review in 1879 and...
Textual Features	Matilda Betham-Edwards	MBE observed in her introduction to French Fireside Poetry that in France the poetesses have hitherto taken lower rank than the great prose-writers Sévigné and Sand . She mentions but does not translate the unhappy...
Textual Features	Françoise de Graffigny	Compared with her celebrated predecessor Marie de Sévigné , FG writes an informal, colloquial, sometimes headlong style. Her subject-matter includes domestic trivia and expressions of mood, feeling, and opinion, as well as information about historical...
Textual Features	Mathilde Blind	MB 's other Byron introduction, to her selection of his letters and journals, positions the genre (with reference to human curiosity, and to the epistolary novel as well as to the letters of Sevigné and...
Textual Features	Catherine Talbot	CT 's letters often convey her literary opinions, discussing writing by, for instance, Marie de Sévigné , Richardson , Henry Fielding and Samuel Johnson . She also writes of the details of her daily life...
Textual Production	Lady Eleanor Butler	Sarah Ponsonby bequeathed the journals to Caroline Hamilton , and Harriet Pigott therefore supposed that they were written by Ponsonby . Butler, Lady Eleanor et al. “Foreword and Editorial Materials”. The Hamwood Papers of the Ladies of Llangollen and Caroline Hamilton, edited by Eva Mary Bell, Macmillan, 1930, p. vii - viii; various pages. vii They have been published in several selections: by Mrs G. H. [Eva Mary] Bell
Textual Production	Elizabeth Grant	She also admitted a hope that, if published, the journal might turn a profit for her children, but felt ambivalent about becoming a published author. Grant, Elizabeth. “Introduction”. The Highland Lady in Ireland, edited by Andrew Tod, Canongate, 1991, p. vii - xiii. ix She wrote that she would rather no one had...
Textual Production	Elizabeth Griffith	EG (a Lady) issued a first translation: The Memoirs of Ninon de L'Enclos , with Her Letters to Monsieur de St. Evremond and the Marquis de Sevigné—actually a novel ascribed to Douxménil

Timeline

1671

Madame de Sévigné of France first brought the sheath (condom) to public attention by writing disparagingly of it.

Fraser, Antonia. The Weaker Vessel: Woman’s Lot in Seventeenth Century England. Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1984.

Trager, James. The Women’s Chronology: A Year-by-Year Record, from Prehistory to the Present. Henry Holt, 1994.

155

1758

Pierre-Joseph Boudier de Villemert published, allegedly at Hamburg, a book called L'Ami des femmes, which remarked on the number and excellence of women writers in French.

Goodman, Dena. Becoming a Woman in the Age of Letters. Cornell University Press, 2009.

148

By Christmas 1869

Francis Galton , mathematician, scientist, and eugenicist, published Hereditary Genius: An Enquiry into its Laws and Consequences,

Saturday Review. Chawton.

28.739 (25 December 1869): 832-3

Texts

Sévigné, Marie de. Correspondance. Editor Duchêne, Roger, Gallimard, 1972, 3 vols.

Bussy, Roger de Rabutin, comte de, and Marie de Sévigné. Les mémoires de messire Roger de Rabutin, comte de Bussy. J. Anisson, 1696, 2 vols.

Sévigné, Marie de. Letters of Madame de Rabutin Chantal, Marchioness de Sevigné, to the Comtess de Grignan, her daughter. N. Blandford, 1727, 2 vols.

Sévigné, Marie de. Letters of Madame de Sévigné to her Daughter and her Friends. Editor Aldington, Richard, George Routledge, 1927, 2 vols.