Isabelle de Charrière

"Isabelle de Charriere (1740-1805) is best known for four of her novels: Lettres neuchateloises, Lettres de Mistriss Henley, Lettres ecrites de Lausanne, and Caliste. These finely drawn representations of provincial courtship, marriage, and domestic life have been called the closest thing in French to the novels of Jane Austen.". "A daughter of a distinguished Dutch noble family, she was known in her youth as Belle de Zuylen. At the age of twenty she began a clandestine correspondence with a middle-aged Swiss colonel stationed in Holland. David-Louis, Baron de Constant d'Hermenches, was a friend of Voltaire, an accomplished musician, an amateur writer, and a ladies' man. Their correspondence was one of the finest in a great age of letter writing. It lasted fifteen years, and nearly all of it is extant.". "Although the two rarely saw each other, their epistolary friendship became one of great depth and scope. Their correspondence touches on a wide range of subjects; James Boswell's courtship of Isabelle, her opinions of English high society, the new smallpox inoculation, and visits by royalty. It includes firsthand accounts of the French conquest of Corsica and of Voltaire's social activism. Readers acquainted with Charriere's novels will see in these letters the same finely observed detail, epistolary style, and moral and intellectual awareness."--BOOK JACKET.

123 p. ; 22 cm

"In the aftermath of the French Revolution, three women who have fled France - the straitlaced aristocrat Emilie, her lighthearted maid Josephine, and the worldly Constance - try to make new lives for themselves in Altendorf, Germany. Their experiences, difficulties, and choices address the philosophical question, Are moral theories adequate guides to good conduct?" "In her introduction to this late-eighteenth-century novel by Charriere, Emma Rooksby discusses the sentimental tradition, Enlightenment ideas, epistolary fiction, Charriere's career, and the difficult situation of women and women writers in postrevolulionary France."--Jacket.

" The only available English translation of writings by an Enlightenment-era Dutch aristocrat, writer, composer-and woman. Born Dutch, noble, and free-spirited, Isabelle de Charrière (also known as Belle de Zuylen) was an enlightened woman whose writings-not unlike Jane Austen's-tackled the intricacies of high society, particularly in matters of love. Published when she was only twenty- two, "The Nobleman" is a Persuasion-like tale whose heroine challenges her stodgy father in order to marry a man of unassuming ancestry. But Charrière did not confine herself to simple marriage plots and country courtships. Another story, "Eagonlette and Suggestina," is a thinly veiled critique of Marie Antoinette, cleverly disguised as a fairy tale. The nobleman and other romances will delight fans of Jane Austen and Enlightenment-era French literature. "--