Françoise de Graffigny
Encyclopedia
Françoise de Graffigny, née d'Issembourg Du Buisson d'Happoncourt (11 February 1695 - 12 December 1758) was a French novelist, playwright and salon hostess.
Initially famous as the author of Lettres d'une Péruvienne
, a novel published in 1747, she became the world's best-known living woman writer after the success of her sentimental comedy, Cénie, in 1750. Her reputation as a dramatist suffered when her second play at the Comédie-Française
, La Fille d'Aristide, was a flop in 1758, and even her novel fell out of favor after 1830. From then until the last third of the twentieth century, she was almost forgotten, but thanks to new scholarship and the interest in women writers generated by the feminist movement, Françoise de Graffigny is now regarded as one of the major French writers of the eighteenth century.
. While she was still a girl, her family moved to Saint-Nicolas-de-Port
, where her father was commander of the duke of Lorraine's horse guards.
On 19 January 1712, not yet seventeen years old, Mademoiselle d'Happoncourt was married in the church of Saint-Nicolas-de-Port to François Huguet, a young officer in the duke's service. He was a son of the wealthy mayor of Neufchâteau
, Jean Huguet. Like her father, he was an écuyer or squire, the lowest rank of nobility
. In honor of the marriage, the groom received from his father the estate at Graffigny
and the couple took the title "de Graffigny" as their name. On her side, the bride received a large house inherited by her mother from Jacques Callot, situated in Villers-lès-Nancy
, where the couple lived for about six years.
François de Graffigny seemed to have a promising future, and the couple produced three children within five years: Charlotte-Antoinette, born June 1713, died 1715; Jean-Jacques, born March 1715, died soon after birth; and Marie-Thérèse, born March 1716, died December 1717. But he was a gambler, drunk and wife-beater, who was jailed for domestic violence. In 1718, deeply in debt and already living apart, the Graffignys signed a document, which gave her authority to deal with the family's finances and required him to leave Lorraine for Paris. In 1723 she obtained a legal separation. He died in 1725, under mysterious circumstances. As a widow, Françoise de Graffigny was free from her brutal husband, but she never fully recovered from the financial losses or the emotional trauma of her marriage.
Françoise de Graffigny's mother died in 1727, and her father remarried just months afterward, and moved to a remote town in Lorraine, where he too died in 1733, leaving his daughter free of all family obligations. By that date, the court of Lorraine had moved to Lunéville
, where she lived with the support of the duke's widow, the dowager duchess and regent, Élisabeth Charlotte d'Orléans. There she met a dashing cavalry officer, Léopold Desmarest, thirteen years her junior, whose father Henry Desmarest
was in charge of the court's music; around 1727 he and Françoise de Graffigny began a passionate affair which lasted until 1743. She also met an even younger man, François-Antoine Devaux
, who had trained to become a lawyer but dreamed of being a writer; known to everyone as Panpan, he became her closest friend and confidant, and in 1733 they began a correspondence that continued until her death. This idyllic period came to an end in 1737, when duke François-Étienne de Lorraine
ceded his duchy to France to obtain French support for his marriage to Maria Theresa of Austria
. Françoise de Graffigny's friends and protectors were dispersed and she herself had nowhere to go.
; this lady had been Marie-Élisabeth-Sophie de Lorraine, princesse de Guise, before her marriage in April 1734. Françoise de Graffigny planned to join them in Paris in spring 1739, but she needed to bridge the winter months, and wheedled an invitation to Cirey
, the château where Émilie, marquise Du Châtelet
, had been living since 1734 with her lover, Voltaire
.
The journey from Lunéville to Cirey took two and half months; she stopped at Commercy
, where the dowager duchess of Lorraine and her court had moved into the famous château
, and at Demange-aux-Eaux
she stayed with a friend, the marquise de Stainville, mother of the future duc de Choiseul. Her two-month stay at Cirey has been the best-known part of her life, because the thirty-odd letters she wrote about it to Devaux were published in 1820. The letters were, however, inaccurately transcribed, severely cut, revised and in fact added to by the anonymous 1820 editor. He or she inserted anecdotes and witticisms to make Voltaire seem more illustrious, and took every opportunity to show Françoise de Graffigny as a sentimental, foolish and irresponsible gossip.
The first few weeks at Cirey seemed like a wonderful dream come true. Voltaire read from his works in progress and joined in performances of his plays. The hostess, Émilie, showed off her estate, her furnishings, her clothes and jewelry, and her formidable learning. There were constant visitors, including luminaries like the scientist-philosopher Pierre Louis Maupertuis
. The conversation ranged over every topic imaginable, always enlivened by Voltaire's sparkling wit.
Yet trouble was brewing. Voltaire read from his scandalous burlesque poem about Joan of Arc
, La Pucelle. Émilie intercepted a letter from Devaux which mentioned the work, leapt to the false conclusion that her guest had copied a canto and circulated it, and accused her of treachery. For a month after that, Françoise de Graffigny was a virtual prisoner at Cirey, until her lover Desmarest passed through en route to Paris and took her on the final leg of her journey.
These first years in Paris were difficult, but not unproductive. She began to make new friends, the most important being the actress Jeanne Quinault
, who retired from the stage in 1741, and began to receive her friends from the literary world at casual dinners, called the "Bout-du-Banc". Through Jeanne Quinault, Françoise de Graffigny met most of the authors writing in Paris in this era – Louis de Cahusac
, Claude Crébillon
, Charles Collé
, Philippe Néricault Destouches
, Charles Pinot Duclos
, Barthélemy Christophe Fagan de Lugny, Jean-Baptiste-Louis Gresset
, Pierre de Marivaux
, François-Augustin de Paradis de Moncrif
, Pierre-Claude Nivelle de La Chaussée
, Alexis Piron
, Claude Henri de Fuzée de Voisenon, and others – as well as nobles who enjoyed their company and dabbled in writing themselves, like comte de Caylus
, comte de Maurepas, duc de Nivernais, comte de Pont-de-Veyle, and comte de Saint-Florentin. Her lover Desmarest was away much of the time with his regiment, and was trapped in the besieged city
of Prague
in late 1741; when he returned to Paris without funds to re-equip himself, he accepted money from his mistress even though he had already decided to leave her. The emotional shock of his betrayal never fully healed, but his departure left her free to pursue her own ambitions.
She moved into her new house on 27 November 1742. In the summer of 1743 she sublet an upper floor apartment to Pierre Valleré, a lawyer, and had a brief but intense fling with him, the only liaison besides Desmarest she mentions in her letters. Although relations between them were often strained, he remained with her, as her lodger, legal adviser, and companion, until her death; and he was the principal executor of her will. Her finances remained a problem; in 1744 she staked her hopes on an investment that proved unsound, and she found herself in early 1746 deeper in debt than ever.
, alleged sage). In her letters she also mentions a traditional comedy called L'École des amis (The School for friends), a fantastic comedy called Le Monde vrai (The Truthful World) and a short supernatural novel called Le Sylphe (The Sylph
). None of these works was ever published, and some of them were destroyed, but others survive in manuscript or in fragments among her papers.
Her fellow participants at Jeanne Quinault's Bout-du-Banc insisted that she contribute a piece to their next collective work. Comte de Caylus gave her the outline of a "nouvelle espagnole", a type of short fiction
in vogue since the seventeenth century, which she developed on her own. The volume appeared in 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 example leads to as many virtues as vices). Françoise de Graffigny's contribution was singled out for praise. This success encouraged her to accept another task from Caylus, the outline of a fairy tale
with the title La Princesse Azerolle, published later in 1745 in a collection called Cinq Contes de fées (Five Fairy Tales). Although several of her friends knew of her authorship, La Princesse Azerolle was never publicly attributed to Françoise de Graffigny until the recent publication of her correspondence. Both of these early short works deserve to be better known.
Her confidence restored with the two short stories, she began writing two more substantial works, an epistolary novel, published in December 1747 as Lettres d'une Péruvienne (Letters from a Peruvian Woman), and a sentimental comedy, staged in June 1750 as Cénie. The inspiration for the novel came from seeing a performance of Alzire, Voltaire's play set during the Spanish conquest of Peru
; immediately afterwards, in May 1743, she began to read the Inca Garcilaso de la Vega
's History of the Incas, which supplied most of the historical background for her story. She was also following Montesquieu's device of a foreign visitor in France as in the Lettres Persanes (Persian Letters
). Her novel was an immediate success with readers; by the end of 1748 there were fourteen editions, including three of an English translation. Over the next hundred years, more than 140 editions appeared, including an edition in 1752 revised and expanded by the author, several different English translations, two in Italian, and others in German, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, and Swedish.
After the success of Lettres d'une Péruvienne, Françoise de Graffigny was a celebrity. Thanks largely to her fame, she found new protectors, and her financial situation improved. With renewed energy and self-assurance, she turned her attention to her play, Cénie. Its composition was more complicated than that of the novel, because she consulted more friends, and getting a work staged required more steps than getting a manuscript published. The premiere took place on 25 June 1750; the play was an instant hit. Measured by the number of first-run performances, the number of spectators, and the box office receipts, it was one of the ten most successful new plays of the eighteenth century in France. It was helped by the novelty of having a woman as author, and by the vogue of comédie larmoyante
(tear-jerking comedy). It was revived several times in the next few years, but quickly faded from the repertory. The author's reputation was damaged by the failure of her second play, La Fille d'Aristide (Aristides
' Daughter), which was withdrawn soon after its premiere on 27 April 1758.
hostesses in mid-century Paris. She was assisted by the presence of her cousin's daughter, Anne-Catherine de Ligniville, a charming young woman whose high nobility and low wealth seemed to condemn her to a convent or a marriage of convenience. Françoise de Graffigny brought her from a provincial convent to Paris in September 1746, and played a major role in arranging her love-match marriage to the financier philosopher Claude Adrien Helvétius
on 17 August 1751. Earlier that same summer, she moved from her house on the rue Saint-Hyacinthe to another on the rue d'Enfer, with an entrance into the Luxembourg Garden
. Here she received her friends, visitors from all over Europe, and many of the most famous French writers and political figures of the era, including d'Alembert, Diderot, Fontenelle
, Montesquieu, Prévost
, Jean-Jacques Rousseau
, Turgot
, and Voltaire.
She died peacefully at home in Paris on 12 December 1758, after suffering a seizure while playing cards with three old friends. She had been in failing health for a long time. It took Valleré and others ten years to settle her estate; she left many debts, but in the end her assets covered them all. Her relations with Devaux had cooled over the years, and their correspondence was interrupted by quarrels several times in the 1750s; nevertheless she continued to write to him until the eve of her death. Although he never undertook the project of editing their letters, a fantasy they had often discussed, he preserved the collection of their letters and her manuscripts. Most of the collection is now in the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library
at Yale University, and other parts of it are in the Morgan Library
in New York and the Bibliothèque nationale de France
. Beginning in 1985, a team headed by J. A. Dainard has been publishing her letters for the first time. They may well prove to be her most important work, because of her insider's view of French literary life in the heyday of the Age of Enlightenment
, her unprecedentedly detailed and intimate account of a woman's life in eighteenth-century France, and her lively colloquial style.
), and that spelling should be followed.
Initially famous as the author of Lettres d'une Péruvienne
Letters from a Peruvian Woman
Letters from a Peruvian Woman is a 1747 epistolary novel by Françoise de Graffigny. It tells the story of Zilia, a young Incan princess, who is abducted from the Temple of the Sun by the Spanish during the Spanish conquest of the Inca Empire...
, a novel published in 1747, she became the world's best-known living woman writer after the success of her sentimental comedy, Cénie, in 1750. Her reputation as a dramatist suffered when her second play at the Comédie-Française
Comédie-Française
The Comédie-Française or Théâtre-Français is one of the few state theaters in France. It is the only state theater to have its own troupe of actors. It is located in the 1st arrondissement of Paris....
, La Fille d'Aristide, was a flop in 1758, and even her novel fell out of favor after 1830. From then until the last third of the twentieth century, she was almost forgotten, but thanks to new scholarship and the interest in women writers generated by the feminist movement, Françoise de Graffigny is now regarded as one of the major French writers of the eighteenth century.
Early life, marriage, and widowhood in Lorraine
Françoise d’Issembourg d’Happoncourt was born in Nancy, in the duchy of Lorraine. Her father, François d’Happoncourt, was a cavalry officer. Her mother, Marguerite Callot, was a great-niece of the famous Lorraine artist Jacques CallotJacques Callot
Jacques Callot was a baroque printmaker and draftsman from the Duchy of Lorraine . He is an important figure in the development of the old master print...
. While she was still a girl, her family moved to Saint-Nicolas-de-Port
Saint-Nicolas-de-Port
Saint-Nicolas-de-Port is a commune in the Meurthe-et-Moselle département in north-eastern France.Its inhabitants are known asPortois. In the past, the Portois were known as loudmouths; their neighbours across the Meurthe at Varangéville liked to gather on the opposite river bank to bombard them...
, where her father was commander of the duke of Lorraine's horse guards.
On 19 January 1712, not yet seventeen years old, Mademoiselle d'Happoncourt was married in the church of Saint-Nicolas-de-Port to François Huguet, a young officer in the duke's service. He was a son of the wealthy mayor of Neufchâteau
Neufchâteau, Vosges
Neufchâteau is a commune in the Vosges department in Lorraine in northeastern France.Inhabitants are called Néocastriens.-Geography:Positioned at the confluence of the Rivers Meuse and Mouzon, the little town dominates the Vosges Plain...
, Jean Huguet. Like her father, he was an écuyer or squire, the lowest rank of nobility
French nobility
The French nobility was the privileged order of France in the Middle Ages and the Early Modern periods.In the political system of the Estates General, the nobility made up the Second Estate...
. In honor of the marriage, the groom received from his father the estate at Graffigny
Graffigny-Chemin
Graffigny-Chemin is a commune in the Haute-Marne department in north-eastern France.-Location:A small village of 232 inhabitants, 6 kilometres east of Bourmont, 6 kilometres west of the A31 Highway, 20 kilometres south of Neufchateau and 6 kilometres north of Chaumont-la-Ville...
and the couple took the title "de Graffigny" as their name. On her side, the bride received a large house inherited by her mother from Jacques Callot, situated in Villers-lès-Nancy
Villers-lès-Nancy
Villers-lès-Nancy is a commune in the Meurthe-et-Moselle department in north-eastern France.Inhabitants are known as Villarois.-Geography:Villers-lès-Nancy is a suburb on the southwest of Nancy...
, where the couple lived for about six years.
François de Graffigny seemed to have a promising future, and the couple produced three children within five years: Charlotte-Antoinette, born June 1713, died 1715; Jean-Jacques, born March 1715, died soon after birth; and Marie-Thérèse, born March 1716, died December 1717. But he was a gambler, drunk and wife-beater, who was jailed for domestic violence. In 1718, deeply in debt and already living apart, the Graffignys signed a document, which gave her authority to deal with the family's finances and required him to leave Lorraine for Paris. In 1723 she obtained a legal separation. He died in 1725, under mysterious circumstances. As a widow, Françoise de Graffigny was free from her brutal husband, but she never fully recovered from the financial losses or the emotional trauma of her marriage.
Françoise de Graffigny's mother died in 1727, and her father remarried just months afterward, and moved to a remote town in Lorraine, where he too died in 1733, leaving his daughter free of all family obligations. By that date, the court of Lorraine had moved to Lunéville
Lunéville
Lunéville is a commune in the Meurthe-et-Moselle department in France.It is a sub-prefecture of the department and lies on the Meurthe River.-History:...
, where she lived with the support of the duke's widow, the dowager duchess and regent, Élisabeth Charlotte d'Orléans. There she met a dashing cavalry officer, Léopold Desmarest, thirteen years her junior, whose father Henry Desmarest
Henri Desmarets
Henri Desmarets was a French composer of the Baroque period primarily known for his stage works, although he also composed sacred music as well as secular cantatas, songs and instrumental works....
was in charge of the court's music; around 1727 he and Françoise de Graffigny began a passionate affair which lasted until 1743. She also met an even younger man, François-Antoine Devaux
François-Antoine Devaux
François-Antoine Devaux was a Lorraine poet and man of letters. He was called Panpan by his friends.-Life:...
, who had trained to become a lawyer but dreamed of being a writer; known to everyone as Panpan, he became her closest friend and confidant, and in 1733 they began a correspondence that continued until her death. This idyllic period came to an end in 1737, when duke François-Étienne de Lorraine
Francis I, Holy Roman Emperor
Francis I was Holy Roman Emperor and Grand Duke of Tuscany, though his wife effectively executed the real power of those positions. With his wife, Maria Theresa, he was the founder of the Habsburg-Lorraine dynasty...
ceded his duchy to France to obtain French support for his marriage to Maria Theresa of Austria
Maria Theresa of Austria
Maria Theresa Walburga Amalia Christina was the only female ruler of the Habsburg dominions and the last of the House of Habsburg. She was the sovereign of Austria, Hungary, Croatia, Bohemia, Mantua, Milan, Lodomeria and Galicia, the Austrian Netherlands and Parma...
. Françoise de Graffigny's friends and protectors were dispersed and she herself had nowhere to go.
From Lorraine to Paris
Finally in 1738 she arranged to become a companion to the duchesse de RichelieuLouis François Armand du Plessis, duc de Richelieu
Armand de Vignerot du Plessis was a French soldier, diplomat and statesman. Joining the army, he participated in three major wars and eventually rose to the rank of Marshal of France....
; this lady had been Marie-Élisabeth-Sophie de Lorraine, princesse de Guise, before her marriage in April 1734. Françoise de Graffigny planned to join them in Paris in spring 1739, but she needed to bridge the winter months, and wheedled an invitation to Cirey
Cirey-sur-Blaise
Cirey-sur-Blaise is a commune in the Haute-Marne department in north-eastern France.-See also:*Communes of the Haute-Marne department...
, the château where Émilie, marquise Du Châtelet
Émilie du Châtelet
-Early life:Du Châtelet was born on 17 December 1706 in Paris, the only daughter of six children. Three brothers lived to adulthood: René-Alexandre , Charles-Auguste , and Elisabeth-Théodore . Her eldest brother, René-Alexandre, died in 1720, and the next brother, Charles-Auguste, died in 1731...
, had been living since 1734 with her lover, Voltaire
Voltaire
François-Marie Arouet , better known by the pen name Voltaire , was a French Enlightenment writer, historian and philosopher famous for his wit and for his advocacy of civil liberties, including freedom of religion, free trade and separation of church and state...
.
The journey from Lunéville to Cirey took two and half months; she stopped at Commercy
Commercy
Commercy is a commune in the Meuse department in Lorraine in north-eastern France.It is the home of the madeleines referred to by Marcel Proust in A la Recherche du Temps Perdu.-History:...
, where the dowager duchess of Lorraine and her court had moved into the famous château
Château de Commercy
The Château de Commercy is a castle in the town of Commercy, in the Meuse department of France. It was the principal residence of the reigning Prince of Commercy and was built by Charles Henri de Lorraine...
, and at Demange-aux-Eaux
Demange-aux-Eaux
Demange-aux-Eaux is a commune in the Meuse department in Lorraine in north-eastern France.-See also:*Communes of the Meuse department...
she stayed with a friend, the marquise de Stainville, mother of the future duc de Choiseul. Her two-month stay at Cirey has been the best-known part of her life, because the thirty-odd letters she wrote about it to Devaux were published in 1820. The letters were, however, inaccurately transcribed, severely cut, revised and in fact added to by the anonymous 1820 editor. He or she inserted anecdotes and witticisms to make Voltaire seem more illustrious, and took every opportunity to show Françoise de Graffigny as a sentimental, foolish and irresponsible gossip.
The first few weeks at Cirey seemed like a wonderful dream come true. Voltaire read from his works in progress and joined in performances of his plays. The hostess, Émilie, showed off her estate, her furnishings, her clothes and jewelry, and her formidable learning. There were constant visitors, including luminaries like the scientist-philosopher Pierre Louis Maupertuis
Pierre Louis Maupertuis
Pierre-Louis Moreau de Maupertuis was a French mathematician, philosopher and man of letters. He became the Director of the Académie des Sciences, and the first President of the Berlin Academy of Science, at the invitation of Frederick the Great....
. The conversation ranged over every topic imaginable, always enlivened by Voltaire's sparkling wit.
Yet trouble was brewing. Voltaire read from his scandalous burlesque poem about Joan of Arc
Joan of Arc
Saint Joan of Arc, nicknamed "The Maid of Orléans" , is a national heroine of France and a Roman Catholic saint. A peasant girl born in eastern France who claimed divine guidance, she led the French army to several important victories during the Hundred Years' War, which paved the way for the...
, La Pucelle. Émilie intercepted a letter from Devaux which mentioned the work, leapt to the false conclusion that her guest had copied a canto and circulated it, and accused her of treachery. For a month after that, Françoise de Graffigny was a virtual prisoner at Cirey, until her lover Desmarest passed through en route to Paris and took her on the final leg of her journey.
Paris
Her plan to live as companion to the duchesse de Richelieu worked only for a short time, because the duchess died of tuberculosis in August 1740. She then lived as a boarder in two convents, and stayed with a wealthy friend. Finally, in autumn 1742, she rented her own house on the rue Saint-Hyacinthe.These first years in Paris were difficult, but not unproductive. She began to make new friends, the most important being the actress Jeanne Quinault
Jeanne Quinault
Jeanne Quinault , was a French actress, playwright and salon hostess....
, who retired from the stage in 1741, and began to receive her friends from the literary world at casual dinners, called the "Bout-du-Banc". Through Jeanne Quinault, Françoise de Graffigny met most of the authors writing in Paris in this era – Louis de Cahusac
Louis de Cahusac
Louis de Cahusac was a French playwright and librettist, most famous for his work with the composer Jean-Philippe Rameau...
, Claude Crébillon
Claude Prosper Jolyot de Crébillon
Claude Prosper Jolyot de Crébillon was a French novelist.Born in Paris, he was the son of a famous tragedian, Prosper Jolyot de Crébillon. He received a Jesuit education at the elite Lycée Louis-le-Grand...
, Charles Collé
Charles Collé
Charles Collé was a French dramatist and songwriter.The son of a notary, he was born in Paris. He became interested in the rhymes of Jean Heguanier, the most famous writer of couplets in Paris. From a notary's office, Collé was transferred to that of the receiver-general of finance, where he...
, Philippe Néricault Destouches
Philippe Néricault Destouches
Philippe Néricault Destouches was a French dramatist.-Biography:Destouches was born at Tours, in the today's department of Indre-et-Loire....
, Charles Pinot Duclos
Charles Pinot Duclos
Charles Pinot Duclos was a French author.-Life:He was born at Dinan, in Brittany. At an early age, he was sent to study at Paris...
, Barthélemy Christophe Fagan de Lugny, Jean-Baptiste-Louis Gresset
Jean-Baptiste-Louis Gresset
Jean-Baptiste-Louis Gresset was a French poet and dramatist, best known for his poem Vert-Vert....
, Pierre de Marivaux
Pierre de Marivaux
Pierre Carlet de Chamblain de Marivaux , commonly referred to as Marivaux, was a French novelist and dramatist....
, François-Augustin de Paradis de Moncrif
François-Augustin de Paradis de Moncrif
François-Augustin de Paradis de Moncrif was a French writer and poet, of a family originally of Scots origin. He was appointed royal historiographer to Louis XV of France. His parody of owlishly pedantic scholarship, Histoire des chats, and the protection of the house of Orléans gained him entry...
, Pierre-Claude Nivelle de La Chaussée
Pierre-Claude Nivelle de La Chaussée
Pierre-Claude Nivelle de La Chaussée , French dramatist who blurred the lines between comedy and tragedy with his comédie larmoyante....
, Alexis Piron
Alexis Piron
Alexis Piron was a French epigrammatist and dramatist.He was born at Dijon, where his father, Aimé Piron, was an apothecary. Piron senior wrote verse in the Burgundian language. Alexis began life as clerk and secretary to a banker, and then studied law...
, Claude Henri de Fuzée de Voisenon, and others – as well as nobles who enjoyed their company and dabbled in writing themselves, like comte de Caylus
Anne Claude Philippe de Tubieres de Grimoard de Pestels de Levis, Comte de Caylus
Anne Claude de Tubières-Grimoard de Pestels Levieux de Lévis, comte de Caylus, marquis d'Esternay, baron de Bransac , French antiquarian, proto-archaeologist and man of letters, was born at Paris....
, comte de Maurepas, duc de Nivernais, comte de Pont-de-Veyle, and comte de Saint-Florentin. Her lover Desmarest was away much of the time with his regiment, and was trapped in the besieged city
War of the Austrian Succession
The War of the Austrian Succession – including King George's War in North America, the Anglo-Spanish War of Jenkins' Ear, and two of the three Silesian wars – involved most of the powers of Europe over the question of Maria Theresa's succession to the realms of the House of Habsburg.The...
of Prague
Prague
Prague is the capital and largest city of the Czech Republic. Situated in the north-west of the country on the Vltava river, the city is home to about 1.3 million people, while its metropolitan area is estimated to have a population of over 2.3 million...
in late 1741; when he returned to Paris without funds to re-equip himself, he accepted money from his mistress even though he had already decided to leave her. The emotional shock of his betrayal never fully healed, but his departure left her free to pursue her own ambitions.
She moved into her new house on 27 November 1742. In the summer of 1743 she sublet an upper floor apartment to Pierre Valleré, a lawyer, and had a brief but intense fling with him, the only liaison besides Desmarest she mentions in her letters. Although relations between them were often strained, he remained with her, as her lodger, legal adviser, and companion, until her death; and he was the principal executor of her will. Her finances remained a problem; in 1744 she staked her hopes on an investment that proved unsound, and she found herself in early 1746 deeper in debt than ever.
Writer
Yet this was the time when she began the work that would eventually bring her fame and material comfort, if not wealth. As early as 1733, her letters to Devaux mention writing projects, some his, some joint, and some hers. When she went to Paris, she carried with her several of her manuscripts, including a sentimental drama called L'Honnête Homme (The Honest Man), an allegorical comedy called La Réunion du Bon-sens et de l'Esprit (The Reunion of Common Sense and Wit), and a verse comedy called Héraclite, prétendu sage (HeraclitusHeraclitus
Heraclitus of Ephesus was a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher, a native of the Greek city Ephesus, Ionia, on the coast of Asia Minor. He was of distinguished parentage. Little is known about his early life and education, but he regarded himself as self-taught and a pioneer of wisdom...
, alleged sage). In her letters she also mentions a traditional comedy called L'École des amis (The School for friends), a fantastic comedy called Le Monde vrai (The Truthful World) and a short supernatural novel called Le Sylphe (The Sylph
Sylph
Sylph is a mythological creature in the Western tradition. The term originates in Paracelsus, who describes sylphs as invisible beings of the air, his elementals of air...
). None of these works was ever published, and some of them were destroyed, but others survive in manuscript or in fragments among her papers.
Her fellow participants at Jeanne Quinault's Bout-du-Banc insisted that she contribute a piece to their next collective work. Comte de Caylus gave her the outline of a "nouvelle espagnole", a type of short fiction
Novel
A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....
in vogue since the seventeenth century, which she developed on her own. The volume appeared in 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
Novella
A novella is a written, fictional, prose narrative usually longer than a novelette but shorter than a novel. The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America Nebula Awards for science fiction define the novella as having a word count between 17,500 and 40,000...
, or A bad example leads to as many virtues as vices). Françoise de Graffigny's contribution was singled out for praise. This success encouraged her to accept another task from Caylus, the outline of a fairy tale
Fairy tale
A fairy tale is a type of short story that typically features such folkloric characters, such as fairies, goblins, elves, trolls, dwarves, giants or gnomes, and usually magic or enchantments. However, only a small number of the stories refer to fairies...
with the title La Princesse Azerolle, published later in 1745 in a collection called Cinq Contes de fées (Five Fairy Tales). Although several of her friends knew of her authorship, La Princesse Azerolle was never publicly attributed to Françoise de Graffigny until the recent publication of her correspondence. Both of these early short works deserve to be better known.
Her confidence restored with the two short stories, she began writing two more substantial works, an epistolary novel, published in December 1747 as Lettres d'une Péruvienne (Letters from a Peruvian Woman), and a sentimental comedy, staged in June 1750 as Cénie. The inspiration for the novel came from seeing a performance of Alzire, Voltaire's play set during the Spanish conquest of Peru
Spanish conquest of the Inca Empire
The Spanish conquest of the Inca Empire was one of the most important campaigns in the Spanish colonization of the Americas. This historic process of military conquest was made by Spanish conquistadores and their native allies....
; immediately afterwards, in May 1743, she began to read the Inca Garcilaso de la Vega
Inca Garcilaso de la Vega
Garcilaso de la Vega , born Gómez Suárez de Figueroa, was a historian and writer from the Spanish Viceroyalty of Peru. The son of a Spanish conquistador and an Inca noblewoman, he is recognized primarily for his contributions to Inca history, culture, and society...
's History of the Incas, which supplied most of the historical background for her story. She was also following Montesquieu's device of a foreign visitor in France as in the Lettres Persanes (Persian Letters
Persian Letters
Persian Letters is a literary work by Charles de Secondat, baron de Montesquieu, recounting the experiences of two Persian noblemen, Usbek and Rica, who are traveling through France.-Plot summary:...
). Her novel was an immediate success with readers; by the end of 1748 there were fourteen editions, including three of an English translation. Over the next hundred years, more than 140 editions appeared, including an edition in 1752 revised and expanded by the author, several different English translations, two in Italian, and others in German, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, and Swedish.
After the success of Lettres d'une Péruvienne, Françoise de Graffigny was a celebrity. Thanks largely to her fame, she found new protectors, and her financial situation improved. With renewed energy and self-assurance, she turned her attention to her play, Cénie. Its composition was more complicated than that of the novel, because she consulted more friends, and getting a work staged required more steps than getting a manuscript published. The premiere took place on 25 June 1750; the play was an instant hit. Measured by the number of first-run performances, the number of spectators, and the box office receipts, it was one of the ten most successful new plays of the eighteenth century in France. It was helped by the novelty of having a woman as author, and by the vogue of comédie larmoyante
Comédie larmoyante
Comédie larmoyante was a genre of French drama of the 18th century. In this type of sentimental comedy, the impending tragedy was resolved at the end, amid reconciliations and floods of tears. Plays of this genre that ended unhappily nevertheless allowed the audience to see that a "moral...
(tear-jerking comedy). It was revived several times in the next few years, but quickly faded from the repertory. The author's reputation was damaged by the failure of her second play, La Fille d'Aristide (Aristides
Aristides
Aristides , 530 BC – 468 BC was an Athenian statesman, nicknamed "the Just".- Biography :Aristides was the son of Lysimachus, and a member of a family of moderate fortune. Of his early life, it is only told that he became a follower of the statesman Cleisthenes and sided with the aristocratic party...
' Daughter), which was withdrawn soon after its premiere on 27 April 1758.
Salon hostess
de Graffigny's fame also made her house a popular place for social gatherings, and she was one of the important salonSalon (gathering)
A salon is a gathering of people under the roof of an inspiring host, held partly to amuse one another and partly to refine taste and increase their knowledge of the participants through conversation. These gatherings often consciously followed Horace's definition of the aims of poetry, "either to...
hostesses in mid-century Paris. She was assisted by the presence of her cousin's daughter, Anne-Catherine de Ligniville, a charming young woman whose high nobility and low wealth seemed to condemn her to a convent or a marriage of convenience. Françoise de Graffigny brought her from a provincial convent to Paris in September 1746, and played a major role in arranging her love-match marriage to the financier philosopher Claude Adrien Helvétius
Claude Adrien Helvétius
Claude Adrien Helvétius was a French philosopher and littérateur.-Life:...
on 17 August 1751. Earlier that same summer, she moved from her house on the rue Saint-Hyacinthe to another on the rue d'Enfer, with an entrance into the Luxembourg Garden
Jardin du Luxembourg
The Jardin du Luxembourg, or the Luxembourg Gardens, is the second largest public park in Paris The Jardin du Luxembourg, or the Luxembourg Gardens, is the second largest public park in Paris The Jardin du Luxembourg, or the Luxembourg Gardens, is the second largest public park in Paris (224,500 m²...
. Here she received her friends, visitors from all over Europe, and many of the most famous French writers and political figures of the era, including d'Alembert, Diderot, Fontenelle
Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle
Bernard Le Bovier de Fontenelle , also called Bernard Le Bouyer de Fontenelle, was a French author.Fontenelle was born in Rouen, France and died in Paris just one month before his 100th birthday. His mother was the sister of great French dramatists Pierre and Thomas Corneille...
, Montesquieu, Prévost
Antoine François Prévost
Antoine François Prévost , usually known simply as the Abbé Prévost, was a French author and novelist.- Life and works :...
, Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Jean-Jacques Rousseau was a Genevan philosopher, writer, and composer of 18th-century Romanticism. His political philosophy influenced the French Revolution as well as the overall development of modern political, sociological and educational thought.His novel Émile: or, On Education is a treatise...
, Turgot
Anne Robert Jacques Turgot, Baron de Laune
Anne-Robert-Jacques Turgot, Baron de Laune , often referred to as Turgot, was a French economist and statesman. Turgot was a student of Francois Quesnay and as such belonged to the Physiocratic school of economic thought...
, and Voltaire.
She died peacefully at home in Paris on 12 December 1758, after suffering a seizure while playing cards with three old friends. She had been in failing health for a long time. It took Valleré and others ten years to settle her estate; she left many debts, but in the end her assets covered them all. Her relations with Devaux had cooled over the years, and their correspondence was interrupted by quarrels several times in the 1750s; nevertheless she continued to write to him until the eve of her death. Although he never undertook the project of editing their letters, a fantasy they had often discussed, he preserved the collection of their letters and her manuscripts. Most of the collection is now in the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library
Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library
Yale University's Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library was a 1963 gift of the Beinecke family. The building was designed by architect Gordon Bunshaft of the firm of Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill, and is the largest building in the world reserved exclusively for the preservation of rare books...
at Yale University, and other parts of it are in the Morgan Library
Morgan Library
The Morgan Library & Museum is a museum and research library in New York City, USA. It was founded to house the private library of J. P. Morgan in 1906, which included, besides the manuscripts and printed books, some of them in rare bindings, his collection of prints and drawings...
in New York and the Bibliothèque nationale de France
Bibliothèque nationale de France
The is the National Library of France, located in Paris. It is intended to be the repository of all that is published in France. The current president of the library is Bruno Racine.-History:...
. Beginning in 1985, a team headed by J. A. Dainard has been publishing her letters for the first time. They may well prove to be her most important work, because of her insider's view of French literary life in the heyday of the Age of Enlightenment
Age of Enlightenment
The Age of Enlightenment was an elite cultural movement of intellectuals in 18th century Europe that sought to mobilize the power of reason in order to reform society and advance knowledge. It promoted intellectual interchange and opposed intolerance and abuses in church and state...
, her unprecedentedly detailed and intimate account of a woman's life in eighteenth-century France, and her lively colloquial style.
Name
As explained above, "Graffigny" is not a family name, but the name of an estate. Spelling was not standardized in the eighteenth century, and one finds the name written and printed many ways. The author herself usually wrote it "Grafigny". As the Lorraine scholar Georges Mangeot pointed out long ago, however, the place name has been standardized as "Graffigny" (it is now part of Graffigny-CheminGraffigny-Chemin
Graffigny-Chemin is a commune in the Haute-Marne department in north-eastern France.-Location:A small village of 232 inhabitants, 6 kilometres east of Bourmont, 6 kilometres west of the A31 Highway, 20 kilometres south of Neufchateau and 6 kilometres north of Chaumont-la-Ville...
), and that spelling should be followed.
Published works
- Nouvelle espagnole ou Le mauvais exemple produit autant de vertus que de 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, staged for the Imperial family in ViennaViennaVienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...
in October 1749, published in Œuvres posthumes, 1770 - Phaza, written 1747, staged in the private theater at Berny, March 1753, published in Œuvres posthumes, 1770
- La Vie privée de Voltaire et de Mme Du Châtelet, letters from Cirey written 1738-39, published with letters by other correspondents, 1820
- Les Saturnales, written in 1752, staged for the Imperial family in Vienna in October 1752, published 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. J. A. Dainard et al., Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 1985--. Volumes 1-12 in print in 2009, vol. 13 due in 2010, edition to be complete in 15 vols.
- Madame de Graffigny: Choix de lettres, ed. English Showalter. "Vif". Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 2001.
Unpublished works (partial list)
- Les Pantins, play submitted to the Comédie-ItalienneComédie-ItalienneOver time, there have been several buildings and several theatrical companies named the "Théâtre-Italien" or the "Comédie-Italienne" in Paris. Following the times, the theatre has shown both plays and operas...
in 1747; rejected; never published; only fragments survive. - Besides the early works mentioned in the article above, Françoise de Graffigny wrote several short plays to be performed by the children of Maria Theresa of Austria and her husband, the Emperor François-Étienne of Lorraine. They include Ziman et Zenise and Les Saturnales, published posthumously, and also L'Ignorant présomptueux, 1748, and Le Temple de la vertu, 1750, of which full texts survive in manuscript. An unnamed work sent to Vienna in 1753 has not been identified.
- Discourse on the topic "Que l'amour des Lettres inspire l'amour de la Vertu" (The love of literature inspires the love of virtue), submitted for the competition sponsored by the Académie françaiseAcadémie françaiseL'Académie française , also called the French Academy, is the pre-eminent French learned body on matters pertaining to the French language. The Académie was officially established in 1635 by Cardinal Richelieu, the chief minister to King Louis XIII. Suppressed in 1793 during the French Revolution,...
in 1752; never published; no manuscript known. - La Baguette, play staged anonymously at the Comédie-Italienne in June 1753; never published; only fragments survive.
Works mistakenly attributed to de Graffigny
- Several titles, such as Azor and Célidor, have been attributed to Françoise de Graffigny, when they are in fact only the names 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 of La Fille d'Aristide.
- A play titled Le Fils légitime, drame en 3 actes en prose, was published with the address LausanneLausanneLausanne is a city in Romandy, the French-speaking part of Switzerland, and is the capital of the canton of Vaud. The seat of the district of Lausanne, the city is situated on the shores of Lake Geneva . It faces the French town of Évian-les-Bains, with the Jura mountains to its north-west...
: Grasset, in 1771, and attributed by the publisher to Françoise de Graffigny. The publisher does not explain the provenance of the manuscript. There is no mention of the play in the alleged author's correspondence and no manuscript of it among her papers. It is probable that she was not the author, and that the publisher put her name on the titlepage, hoping to capitalize 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 under the pen name Henry de Graffigny, are sometimes confused with those of Françoise de Graffigny. Henry was immensely prolific, and wrote more than two hundred books, ranging from serious works on aviation, chemistry and engineering for a general audience, to science fiction, adventure stories, and theater. Henry, not Françoise, wrote Culotte rouge.
Minor authors who were advised and edited by Françoise de Graffigny
Jean Galli de Bibiéna; Antoine Bret; François-Antoine Devaux; La Rougère; Claude Guimond de La Touche; Michel Linant; Charles Palissot de Montenoy; Jean-François de Saint-LambertModern editions
- Dainard, J. A., ed. Correspondance de Madame de Graffigny. Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 1985--, in progress.
- Bray, Bernard, and Isabelle Landy-Houillon, eds. Françoise de 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 Nancy K. Miller, eds. Françoise de Graffigny, Lettres d'une Péruvienne. New York: MLA, 1993; revised edition, 2002.
- DeJean, Joan, and Nancy K. Miller, eds. David Kornacker, tr. Françoise de Graffigny, Letters from a Peruvian Woman. New York: MLA, 1993; revised edition, 2002.
- Mallinson, Jonathan, ed. Françoise de Graffigny, Lettres d'une Péruvienne. "Vif". Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 2002. The best available edition; contains a valuable introduction, shows variants of early editions, and provides supplementary materials in appendices.
- Mallinson, Jonathan, ed. and tr. Françoise de Graffigny, Letters of a Peruvian Woman. "Oxford World classics." Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009.
- Nicoletti, Gianni, ed. Françoise de Graffigny, Lettres d'une Péruvienne. Bari: Adriatica, 1967.
- Trousson, Raymond, ed. Françoise de Graffigny, Lettres d'une Péruvienne. In Romans de femmes du XVIIIe Siècle. Paris: Laffont, 1996. pp. 59–164.
- Gethner, Perry, ed. Françoise de Graffigny, Cénie. In Femmes dramaturges en France (1650–1750), pièces choisies. Biblio 17. Paris, Seattle, Tübingen: Papers on French Seventeenth Century Literature, 1993. pp. 317–72.
Publication history
- Smith, D. W. "Graffigny Rediviva: Editions of the Lettres d'une Péruvienne (1967-1993)." Eighteenth-Century Fiction 7, no. 1 (1994): 71-74.
- Smith, D. W. "La Composition et la publication des contes de Mme de Graffigny." French Studies 50 (1996): 275-83.
- Smith, D. W. "The Popularity of Mme de Graffigny's Lettres d’une Péruvienne: The Bibliographical Evidence." Eighteenth-Century Fiction 3, no. 1 (1990): 1-20.
- McEachern, Jo-Ann, and David 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 First Edition of Mme de Graffigny's Cénie." The Culture of the Book. Essays from Two Hemispheres in Honour of Wallace Kirsop. Melbourne: Bibliographical Society of Australia and New Zealand, 1999. pp. 201–217.
Biography
- Showalter, English, Françoise de Graffigny: Her Life and Works, SVEC, 2004:11. The only biography that makes full use of the correspondence.
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 StewartJoan Hinde StewartJoan Hinde Stewart is the 19th president of Hamilton College in Clinton, New York. After earning a Bachelor of Arts degree, Summa Cum Laude, from St. Joseph's College in 1965, Stewart earned a Ph.D...
, and English Showalter, eds. "Mme de Graffigny and French epistolary writers of the eighteenth century." Papers from the Yale 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 de Strasbourg II, volume 5. Strasbourg: Presses Universitaires de Strasbourg, 1989.