Marie de Sévigné

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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.
Head-and-shoulders painting of Marie de Sévigné by Claude Lefèbvre, c. 1665. She is in half-mourning, in a pale low-necked gown with puff sleeves and a lacy neckline tied with a dark bow. A grey scarf is tucked in. She has pearl ear studs, a pearl necklace, and dark curls around her face. She wears a slight smile. Musée Carnavalet, Paris.

Connections

Connections 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 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...
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...
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, 1981–2024, 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
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
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 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 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 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
Textual Production Sarah Josepha Hale
SJH edited both The Letters of Madame de Sévigné , to Her Daughter and Friends and The Letters of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu .
Okker, Patricia. Our Sister Editors. University of Georgia Press, 1995, p. 264 pp.
231n31
Textual Production Catherine Fanshawe
The letters that CF sent to Anne Grant are not extant, but Grant's side of the correspondence leaves no doubt that the two were in constant dialogue about new books they had read, and their...

Timeline

1671: Madame de Sévigné of France first brought...

Building item

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.
66
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,...

Writing climate item

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,...

Writing climate item

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.