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	Author name Sort descending	Excerpt
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. Barbarina Charlotte, Lady Grey,. A Family Chronicle. Editor Lyster, Gertrude, John Murray. 19-20
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	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	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, p. vii - viii; various pages. vii They have been published in several selections: by Mrs G. H. [Eva Mary] Bell
Theme or Topic Treated in Text	Mary Deverell	The second volume opens with poems on On Heroism in Female Virtue and On the Friendship between two Ladies. MD praises Elizabeth Montagu , Marie de Sévigné , Anne Bacon , and others, some...
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. 104
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...
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...
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...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text	Anne Grant	She likes her reading to be strenuous: she recommends Jane Austen 's Mansfield Park as light reading, Grant, Anne. Memoir and Correspondence of Mrs. Grant of Laggan. Editor Grant, John Peter, Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans. 2: 68 and says she would be happy to give a whole summer to Laetitia-Matilda Hawkins 's The...
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, 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
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, p. 264 pp. 231n31
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 .
Wealth and Poverty	Anne Marsh	Their move back to England was facilitated by a legacy of £5,000 from Anne's father. Heath-Caldwell, J. J. “Letters, References and Notes (1780-1874), Relating to James Caldwell and Anne Marsh (Marsh-Caldwell)”. Ancestors and Relatives of JJ Heath-Caldwell. 1839-1842 They bought the estate the previous year for £13,000 (including standing timber worth £3,280). AM sold the house, estate...

Timeline

1671

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

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.

By Christmas 1869

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

Texts

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

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

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

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