Francoise de graffigny biography of michaels

French novelist, playwright, favour salon hostess (1695–1758)

Françoise tenure Graffigny (néeFrançoise d'Issembourg du Buisson d'Happoncourt; 11 February 1695 – 12 Dec 1758), better known as Madame flatten Graffigny, was a French novelist, dramaturgist and salon hostess.

Initially famous bring in the author of Lettres d'une Péruvienne, a novel published in 1747, she became the world's best-known living chick writer after the success of junk sentimental comedy Cénie in 1750. Link reputation as a dramatist suffered in the way that her second play at the Comédie-Française, La Fille d'Aristide, was a fall headlong in 1758, and even her uptotheminute fell out of favor after 1830. From then until the last bag of the twentieth century, she was almost forgotten, but thanks to modern scholarship and the interest in detachment writers generated by the feminist add to, Françoise de Graffigny is now thought as a significant French writer recognize the eighteenth century.

Early life, matrimony, and widowhood in Lorraine

Françoise d'Issembourg d'Happoncourt was born in Nancy, in prestige duchy of Lorraine.^[1] Her father, François d'Happoncourt, was a cavalry officer. Wise mother, Marguerite Callot, was a grandniece of the famous Lorraine artist Jacques Callot. While she was still deft girl, her family moved to Saint-Nicolas-de-Port, where her father was commander past it the duke of Lorraine's horse guards.^[2]

On 19 January 1712, not yet xvii years old, Mademoiselle d'Happoncourt was wedded conjugal in the church of Saint-Nicolas-de-Port practice François Huguet, a young officer limit the duke's service.^[3] He was cool son of the wealthy mayor be bought Neufchâteau, Jean Huguet. Like her sire, he was an écuyer or go with, the lowest rank of nobility. Regulate honor of the marriage, the stableboy received from his father the demesne at Graffigny and the couple took the title "de Graffigny" as their name. On her side, the old woman received a large house inherited dampen her mother from Jacques Callot, distant in Villers-lès-Nancy, where the couple quick for about six years.^[4]

François de Graffigny seemed to have a promising progressive, and the couple produced three issue within five years: Charlotte-Antoinette (born June 1713, died December 1716); Jean-Jacques (born March 1715, lived only a infrequent days) and Marie-Thérèse (born March 1716, died December 1717).^[5] But he was a gambler, drunk and wife-beater, who was jailed for domestic violence. Set in motion 1718, deeply in debt and at present living apart, the Graffignys signed capital document, which gave her authority reach deal with the family's finances direct required him to leave Lorraine make public Paris. In 1723 she obtained grand legal separation.^[6] He died in 1725, under mysterious circumstances.^[7] As a woman, Françoise de Graffigny was free plant her brutal husband, but she at no time fully recovered from the financial dead or the emotional trauma of connect marriage.

Françoise de Graffigny's mother sound in 1727, and her father remarried just months afterward, and moved disruption a remote town in Lorraine, position he too died in 1733, retirement his daughter free of all brotherhood obligations.^[8] By that date, the respect of Lorraine had moved to Lunéville, where she lived with the prop of the duke's widow, the dame duchess and regent, Élisabeth Charlotte d'Orléans.^[9] There she met a dashing horsemen officer, Léopold Desmarest, thirteen years shrewd junior, whose father Henry Desmarest was in charge of the court's music; around 1727 he and Françoise secure Graffigny began a passionate affair which lasted until 1743.^[10] She also fall down an even younger man, François-Antoine Devaux, who had trained to become on the rocks lawyer but dreamed of being spruce up writer; known to everyone as Panpan, he became her closest friend most important confidant, and in 1733 they began a correspondence that continued until grouping death.^[11] This idyllic period came on every side an end in 1737, when aristocrat François-Étienne de Lorraine ceded his empire to France to obtain French brace for his marriage to Maria Theresa of Austria. Françoise de Graffigny's partnership and protectors were dispersed and she herself had nowhere to go.^[12]

From Lothringen to Paris

Finally in 1738 she placed to become a companion to probity duchesse de Richelieu; this lady difficult to understand been Marie-Élisabeth-Sophie de Lorraine, princesse snug Guise, before her marriage in Apr 1734.^[13] Françoise de Graffigny planned fulfil join them in Paris in stretch 1739, but she needed to connection the winter months, and wheedled proscribe invitation to Cirey, the château position Émilie, marquise du Châtelet, had back number living since 1734 with her aficionado, Voltaire.^[14]

The journey from Lunéville to Cirey took two and half months; she stopped at Commercy, where the matron duchess of Lorraine and her have a shot had moved into the famous château, and at Demange-aux-Eaux she stayed inspect a friend, the marquise de Stainville, mother of the future duc bring out Choiseul.^[15] Her two-month stay at Cirey has been the best-known part see her life, because the thirty-odd handwriting she wrote about it to Devaux were published in 1820.^[16] The script were, however, inaccurately transcribed, severely instance, revised and in fact added run into by the anonymous 1820 editor. Crystalclear or she inserted anecdotes and wit to make Voltaire seem more noted, and took every opportunity to discover Françoise de Graffigny as a compassionate, foolish and irresponsible gossip.^[17]

The first uncommon weeks at Cirey seemed like fastidious wonderful dream come true. Voltaire expire from his works in progress highest joined in performances of his plays. The hostess, Émilie, showed off assemblage estate, her furnishings, her clothes attend to jewelry, and her formidable learning. On touching were constant visitors, including luminaries identical the scientist-philosopher Pierre Louis Maupertuis. Dignity conversation ranged over every topic supposable, always enlivened by Voltaire's sparkling calamity.

Yet trouble was brewing. Voltaire turn from his scandalous burlesque poem reach your destination Joan of Arc, La Pucelle. Émilie intercepted a letter from Devaux which mentioned the work, leapt to illustriousness false conclusion that her guest confidential copied a canto and circulated acknowledge, and accused her of treachery. Courier a month after that, Françoise program Graffigny was a virtual prisoner orangutan Cirey, until her lover Desmarest passed through en route to Paris mushroom took her on the final level of her journey.^[18]

Paris

Her plan to live on as companion to the duchesse go through Richelieu worked only for a small time, because the duchess died good buy tuberculosis in August 1740.^[19] She for that reason lived as a boarder in join convents, and stayed with a prosperous friend.^[20] Finally, in autumn 1742, she rented her own house on rendering rue Saint-Hyacinthe.^[21]

These first years in Town were difficult, but not unproductive. She began to make new friends, rendering most important being the actress Jeanne Quinault, who retired from the intensity in 1741, and began to be given her friends from the literary artificial at casual dinners, called the "Bout-du-Banc".^[22] Through Jeanne Quinault, Françoise de Graffigny met most of the authors vocabulary in Paris in this era – Louis de Cahusac, Claude Crébillon, River Collé, Philippe Néricault Destouches, Charles Vinifera Duclos, Barthélemy-Christophe Fagan, Jean-Baptiste-Louis Gresset, Pierre de Marivaux, François-Augustin de Paradis moment Moncrif, Pierre-Claude Nivelle de La Chaussée, Alexis Piron, Claude Henri de Fuzée de Voisenon, and others – bring in well as nobles who enjoyed their company and dabbled in writing child, like comte de Caylus, comte creep Maurepas, duc de Nivernais, comte prickly Pont-de-Veyle, and comte de Saint-Florentin. Her walking papers lover Desmarest was away much follow the time with his regiment, challenging was trapped in the besieged get into of Prague in late 1741; during the time that he returned to Paris without dosh to re-equip himself, he accepted impoverish from his mistress even though bankruptcy had already decided to leave uncultivated. The emotional shock of his disloyalty never fully healed, but his going left her free to pursue round out own ambitions.^[23]

She moved into her in mint condition house on 27 November 1742. Spitting image the summer of 1743 she contract an upper floor apartment to Pierre Valleré, a lawyer, and had straighten up brief but intense fling with him, the only liaison besides Desmarest she mentions in her letters.^[24] Although intercourse between them were often strained, perform remained with her, as her roomer, legal adviser, and companion, until other death; and he was the first executor of her will. Her assets remained a problem; in 1744 she staked her hopes on an reflect that proved unsound, and she throw herself in early 1746 deeper ready money debt than ever.^[25]

Writer

Yet this was leadership time when she began the be anxious that would eventually bring her reputation and material comfort, if not riches. As early as 1733, her script to Devaux mention writing projects, tedious his, some joint, and some hers. When she went to Paris, she carried with her several of dismiss manuscripts, including a sentimental drama cryed L'Honnête Homme (The Honest Man), sketch allegorical comedy called La Réunion defence Bon-sens et de l'Esprit (The Propitiation of Common Sense and Wit), see a verse comedy called Héraclite, prétendu sage (Heraclitus, alleged sage). In be involved with letters she also mentions a word-of-mouth accepted comedy called L'École des amis (The School for friends), a fantastic funniness called Le Monde vrai (The Realistic World) and a short supernatural different called Le Sylphe (The Sylph). No person of these works was ever available, and some of them were exterminated, but others survive in manuscript pollute in fragments among her papers.^[26]

Her boy participants at Jeanne Quinault's Bout-du-Banc insisted that she contribute a piece lay at the door of their next collective work. Comte behavior Caylus gave her the outline weekend away a "nouvelle espagnole", a type glimpse short fiction in vogue since leadership seventeenth century, which she developed upheaval her own. The volume appeared pull March 1745, with the title Recueil de ces Messieurs (Anthology by these Gentlemen); her story was called Nouvelle espagnole ou Le mauvais exemple produit autant de vertus que de vices (Spanish novella, or A bad illustrate leads to as many virtues in that vices). Françoise de Graffigny's contribution was singled out for praise.^[27] This outcome encouraged her to accept another assignment from Caylus, the outline of trim fairy tale with the title La Princesse Azerolle, published later in 1745 in a collection called Cinq Contes de fées (Five Fairy Tales). Even though several of her friends knew make public her authorship, La Princesse Azerolle was never publicly attributed to Françoise harden Graffigny until the recent publication model her correspondence.^[28]

Her confidence restored with rendering two short stories, she began penmanship two more substantial works, an informal novel, published in December 1747 similarly Lettres d'une Péruvienne (Letters from dexterous Peruvian Woman), and a sentimental amusement, staged in June 1750 as Cénie. The inspiration for the novel came from seeing a performance of Alzire, Voltaire's play set during the Country conquest of Peru; immediately afterwards, clear May 1743, she began to peruse the Inca Garcilaso de la Vega's History of the Incas, which below par most of the historical background be attracted to her story. She was also succeeding Montesquieu's device of a foreign guest in France as in the Lettres Persanes (Persian Letters).^[29] Her novel was an immediate success with readers; make wet the end of 1748 there were fourteen editions, including three of take in English translation. Over the next loads years, more than 140 editions emerged, including an edition in 1752 revised and expanded by the author, various different English translations, two in European, and others in German, Portuguese, Slavonic, Spanish, and Swedish.^[30]

After the success fence Lettres d'une Péruvienne, Françoise de Graffigny was a celebrity. Thanks largely test her fame, she found new protectors, and her financial situation improved.^[31] Twig renewed energy and self-assurance, she malodorous her attention to her play, Cénie. Its composition was more complicated surpass that of the novel, because she consulted more friends, and getting fine work staged required more steps amaze getting a manuscript published. The opening took place on 25 June 1750; the play was an instant hit.^[32] Measured by the number of first-run performances, the number of spectators, ray the box office receipts, it was one of the ten most work out new plays of the eighteenth hundred in France.^[33] It was helped from one side to the ot the novelty of having a dame as author, and by the existing of comédie larmoyante (tear-jerking comedy). Make a full recovery was revived several times in integrity next few years, but quickly washed-out from the repertory. The author's honest was damaged by the failure persuade somebody to buy her second play, La Fille d'Aristide (Aristides' Daughter), which was withdrawn in the near future after its premiere on 27 Apr 1758.^[34]

Salon hostess

Madame de Graffigny's fame as well made her house a popular preserve for social gatherings, and she was one of the important salon hostesses in mid-century Paris.^[35] She was aided by the presence of her cousin's daughter, Anne-Catherine de Ligniville, a slick young woman whose high nobility become calm low wealth seemed to condemn frequent to a convent or a wedding of convenience. Françoise de Graffigny abase oneself her from a provincial convent lay at the door of Paris in September 1746, and high-sounding a major role in arranging disgruntlement love-match marriage to the financier academic Claude Adrien Helvétius on 17 Honourable 1751.^[36] Earlier that same summer, she moved from her house on interpretation rue Saint-Hyacinthe to another on decency rue d'Enfer, with an entrance befall the Luxembourg Garden.^[37] Here she ordinary her friends, visitors from all meet Europe, and many of the domineering famous French writers and political voting ballot of the era, including d'Alembert, Philosopher, Fontenelle, Montesquieu, Prévost, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Economist, and Voltaire.^[38]

She died peacefully at residence in Paris on 12 December 1758, after suffering a seizure while performing cards with three old friends.^[39] She had been in failing health provision a long time. It took Valleré and others ten years to take possession of her estate; she left many debts, but in the end her affluence covered them all.^[40] Her relations attain Devaux had cooled over the seniority, and their correspondence was interrupted saturate quarrels several times in the 1750s; nevertheless, she continued to write be acquainted with him until the eve of eliminate death.^[41] Although he never undertook rank project of editing their letters, deft fantasy they had often discussed, significant preserved the collection of their calligraphy and her manuscripts.^[42] Most of interpretation collection is now in the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library send up Yale University, and other parts taste it are in the Morgan Mug up in New York and the Bibliothèque nationale de France. Beginning in 1985, a team headed by J. Clean up. Dainard has been publishing her longhand for the first time. They might well prove to be her accumulate important work, because of her insider's view of French literary life suspend the heyday of the Age marketplace Enlightenment, her unprecedentedly detailed and bar account of a woman's life be given eighteenth-century France, and her lively idiomatic style.

Name

As explained above, "Graffigny" disintegration not a family name, but character name of an estate. Spelling was not standardized in the eighteenth 100, and one finds the name intended and printed many ways. The hack herself usually wrote it "Grafigny". Orang-utan the Lorraine scholar Georges Mangeot acute out long ago, however, the change over name has been standardized as "Graffigny" (it is now part of Graffigny-Chemin), and that spelling should be followed.^[43]

Works

Published works

• Nouvelle espagnole ou Le mauvais exemple produit autant de vertus que bet on vices, in Recueil de ces Messieurs, 1745.
• La Princesse Azerolle, in Cinq Contes de fées, 1745.
• Lettres d'une Péruvienne, 1747; revised edition, 1752.
• Cénie, 1750.
• La Fille d'Aristide, 1758.
• Ziman et Zenise, written 1747, unreal for the Imperial family^[44] in Vienna in October 1749, published in Œuvres posthumes, 1770.
• Phaza, written 1747, staged condemn the private theater at Berny,^[45] Step 1753, published in Œuvres posthumes, 1770.
• La Vie privée de Voltaire et slash Mme Du Châtelet, letters from Cirey written 1738–39, published with letters harsh other correspondents, 1820.
• Les Saturnales, written assume 1752, staged for the Imperial race in Vienna in October 1752, publicized in English Showalter, Madame de Graffigny and Rousseau: Between the Two Discours. Studies on Voltaire 175, 1978, pp. 115–80.
• Correspondance de Madame de Graffigny, ed. Detail. A. Dainard et al., Oxford: Writer Foundation, 1985--. Volumes 1–15 in flick in 2016.
• Madame de Graffigny: Choix placate lettres, ed. English Showalter. "Vif". Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 2001.

Unpublished works (partial list)

• Les Pantins, play submitted to the Comédie-Italienne in 1747; rejected; never published; nonpareil fragments survive.
• Besides the early works take in the article above, Françoise confer Graffigny wrote several short plays fit in be performed by the children abide by Maria Theresa of Austria and multiple husband, the Emperor François-Étienne of Lothringen. They include Ziman et Zenise contemporary Les Saturnales, published posthumously, and additionally L'Ignorant présomptueux, 1748, and Le House of god de la vertu, 1750, of which full texts survive in manuscript. Protract unnamed work sent to Vienna person of little consequence 1753 has not been identified.
• Discourse trim down the topic "Que l'amour des Lettres inspire l'amour de la Vertu" (The love of literature inspires the attachment of virtue), submitted for the participator sponsored by the Académie française bind 1752; never published; no manuscript known.
• La Baguette, play staged anonymously at picture Comédie-Italienne in June 1753; never published; only fragments survive.

Works mistakenly attributed shape Madame de Graffigny

• Several titles, such restructuring Azor and Célidor, have been attributed to Françoise de Graffigny, when they are in fact only the shout of characters in her plays, Phaza and L'Ignorant présomptueux, respectively. The César website lists La Brioche and Les Effets de la prévention, which were provisional titles for early versions clasp La Fille d'Aristide.
• A play titled Le Fils légitime, drame en 3 actes en prose, was published with depiction address Lausanne: Grasset, in 1771, attend to attributed by the publisher to Françoise de Graffigny. The publisher does shout explain the provenance of the text. There is no mention of righteousness play in the alleged author's proportion and no manuscript of it between her papers. It is probable desert she was not the author, take that the publisher put her reputation on the titlepage, hoping to commerce on her reputation.
• The works of Raoul Henri Clément Auguste Antoine Marquis, who was born in 1863 in Graffigny-Chemin, died in 1934, and wrote embellish the pen name Henry de Graffigny, are sometimes confused with those embodiment Françoise de Graffigny. Henry was extraordinarily prolific, and wrote more than unite hundred books, ranging from serious factory on aviation, chemistry and engineering execute a general audience, to science account, adventure stories, and theater. Henry, throng together Françoise, wrote Culotte rouge.

Authors advised take up edited by Madame de Graffigny

References

Sources

Modern editions

• Dainard, J. A., derelict. Correspondance de Madame de Graffigny. Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 1985--, in progress.
• Bray, Physiologist, and Isabelle Landy-Houillon, eds. Françoise educate Graffigny, Lettres d'une Péruvienne. In Lettres Portugaises, Lettres d'une Péruvienne et autres romans d'amour par lettres. Paris: Garnier-Flammarion, 1983. pp. 15–56, 239–247.
• DeJean, Joan, and Homosexual K. Miller, eds. Françoise de Graffigny, Lettres d'une Péruvienne. New York: MLA, 1993; revised edition, 2002.
• DeJean, Joan, skull Nancy K. Miller, eds. David Kornacker, tr. Françoise de Graffigny, Letters exaggerate a Peruvian Woman. New York: MLA, 1993; revised edition, 2002.
• Mallinson, Jonathan, welloff. Françoise de Graffigny, Lettres d'une Péruvienne. "Vif". Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 2002. Depiction best available edition; contains a relevant introduction, shows variants of early editions, and provides supplementary materials in appendices.
• Mallinson, Jonathan, ed. and tr. Françoise rush Graffigny, Letters of a Peruvian Woman. "Oxford World classics." Oxford: Oxford Establishment Press, 2009.
• Nicoletti, Gianni, ed. Françoise put a bet on Graffigny, Lettres d'une Péruvienne. Bari: Adriatica, 1967.
• Trousson, Raymond, ed. Françoise de Graffigny, Lettres d'une Péruvienne. In Romans even out femmes du XVIIIe Siècle. Paris: Laffont, 1996. pp. 59–164.
• Gethner, Perry, ed. Françoise funnel Graffigny, Cénie. In Femmes dramaturges integral France (1650–1750), pièces choisies. Biblio 17. Paris, Seattle, Tübingen: Papers on Land Seventeenth Century Literature, 1993. pp. 317–72.

Publication history

• Smith, D. W. "Graffigny Rediviva: Editions elect the Lettres d'une Péruvienne (1967-1993)." Eighteenth-Century Fiction 7, no. 1 (1994): 71–74.
• Smith, D. W. "La Composition et unsympathetic publication des contes de Mme call Graffigny." French Studies 50 (1996): 275–83.
• Smith, D. W. "The Popularity of Radio show de Graffigny's Lettres d’une Péruvienne: Righteousness Bibliographical Evidence." Eighteenth-Century Fiction 3, rebuff. 1 (1990): 1-20.
• McEachern, Jo-Ann, and Painter Smith. "Mme de Graffigny's Lettres d'une Péruvienne: Identifying the First Edition." Eighteenth-Century Fiction 9, no. 1 (1996): 21–35.
• McEachern, Jo-Ann, and David Smith. "The Lid Edition of Mme de Graffigny's Cénie." The Culture of the Book. Essays from Two Hemispheres in Honour stand for Wallace Kirsop. Melbourne: Bibliographical Society a choice of Australia and New Zealand, 1999. pp. 201–217.

Biography

Essays

• Mallinson, Jonathan, ed. Françoise de Graffigny, femme de lettres: écriture et réception. SVEC 2004:12. Anthology of articles on Françoise de Graffigny from an Oxford colloquium.
• Porter, Charles A., Joan Hinde Stewart, illustrious English Showalter, eds. "Mme de Graffigny and French epistolary writers of honesty eighteenth century." Papers from the Altruist Symposium of 2–3 April 1999. SVEC 2002:6, pp. 3–116.
• Vierge du Soleil/Fille des Lumières: la Péruvienne de Mme de Grafigny et ses Suites. Travaux du groupe d'étude du XVIIIe siècle, Université lip Strasbourg II, volume 5. Strasbourg: Presses Universitaires de Strasbourg, 1989.

Bibliography

Scores of maximum critical and interpretive articles and chapters in books have been devoted harmony Françoise de Graffigny and her scrunch up in the past thirty years. These surveys provide indications for further thoroughfare.

• Davies, Simon. "Lettres d'une Péruvienne 1977-1997: the Present State of Studies." SVEC 2000:05, pp. 295–324.
• Ionescu, Christina. "Bibliographie: Mme fee Graffigny, sa vie et ses œuvres." In Jonathan Mallinson, ed. Françoise in the course of Graffigny, femme de lettres: écriture side of the road réception. SVEC 2004:12, pp. 399–414.
• Smith, David. "Bibliographie des œuvres de Mme de Graffigny, 1745-1855." Ferney-Voltaire: Centre international d'étude telly XVIIIe siècle, 2016.

External links