|
|
|
|
|
Louise D'epinayLouise Florence Ptronille Tardieu d'Esclavelles d'Epinay (March 11, 1726 – April 17, 1783), French writer, was born at Valenciennes. She is well known on account of her liaisons with Rousseau and Baron von Grimm, and her acquaintanceship with Diderot, D'Alembert, D'Holbach and other French men of letters. Her father, Tardieu d'Esclavelles, a brigadier of infantry, was killed in battle when she was nineteen; and she married her cousin Denis Joseph de La Live d'Epinay, who was made a collector-general of taxes. The marriage was an unhappy one; and Louise d'Epinay believed that the prodigality, dissipation and infidelities of her husband justified her in obtaining a formal separation in 1749. She settled in the chteau of La Chevrette in the valley of Montmorency, and there received a number of distinguished visitors. Conceiving a strong attachment for J-J Rousseau, she furnished for him in 1756 in the valley of Montmorency a cottage which she named the Hermitage, and in this retreat he found for a time the quiet and natural rural pleasures he praised so highly. Rousseau, in his Confessions, affirmed that the inclination was all on her side; but as, after her visit to Geneva, Rousseau became her bitter enemy, little weight can be given to his statements on this point. Her intimacy with Grimm, which began in 1755, marks a turning-point in her life, for under his influence she escaped from the somewhat compromising conditions of her life at La Chevrette. In 1757-1759 she paid a long visit to Geneva, where she was a constant guest of Voltaire. In Grimm's absence from France (1775-1776), Madame d'Epinay continued, under the superintendence of Diderot, the correspondence he had begun with various European sovereigns. She spent most of her later life at La Briche, a small house near La Chevrette, in the society of Grimm and of a small circle of men of letters. Her Conversations d'Emilie (1774), composed for the education of her grand-daughter, Emilie de Belsunce, was crowned by the French Academy in 1783. The Mmoires et Correspondance de Mme dEpinay, renfermant un grand nombre de lettres indites de Grimm, de Diderot, et de J.-J. Rousseau, ainsi que des details, &c., was published at Paris (1818) from a manuscript which she had bequeathed to Grimm. The Mmoires are written by herself in the form of a sort of autobiographic romance. Madame d'Epinay figures in it as Madame de Montbrillant, and Ren is generally recognized as Rousseau, Volx as Grimm, Gamier as Diderot. All the letters and documents published along with the Mmoires are genuine. Many of Madame d'Epinay's letters are contained in the Correspondance de l'abb Galiani (1818). Two anonymous works, Lettres a mon fils (Geneva, 1758) and Mes moments heureux (Geneva, 1759), are also by Madame d'Epinay. See Rousseau's Confessions; Lucien Perey and Gaston Maugras, La Jeunesse de Mme d'Epinay, les dernires annes de Mmme d'Epinay (1882-1883); Sainte-Beuve, Causeries du lundi, vol. ii.; Edmond Scherer, Etudes sur la littrature contemporaine, vols. iii. and vii. There are editions of the Mmoires by L Enault (1855) and by P Boiteau (1865); and an English translation, with introduction and notes (1897), by JH Freese.
d'Epinay, Louise d'Epinay, Louise
|
 |
|
| Copyright 2005-2009 OnPedia.com. All Rights Reserved |
|
|