Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Marie de Sévigné
-
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.
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
.
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
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
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
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
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
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 Production
A. Mary F. Robinson
In 1914 she produced, in French and again using her married name, Madame Duclaux, an edition entitled Mme. de Sévigné
, textes. Years later, in 1927, she contributed the introduction to another edition...
Textual Production
Anne Thackeray Ritchie
ATR
published one of her favourite works, a biography of Madame de Sévigné.
Callow, Steven D. “A Biographical Sketch of Lady Anne Thackeray Ritchie”. Virginia Woolf Quarterly, Vol.
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.
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.
