Madame de Genlis, full name Stéphanie Félicité Ducrest de St-Aubin, comtesse de Genlis, or Madame Brûlart, (January 25, 1746 - December 31, 1830) was a French

French people

The French are a nation that share a common French culture and speak the French language as a mother tongue. Historically, the French population are descended from peoples of Celtic, Latin and Germanic origin, and are today a mixture of several ethnic groups...

 writer

Writer

A writer is a person who produces literature, such as novels, short stories, plays, screenplays, poetry, or other literary art. Skilled writers are able to use language to portray ideas and images....

, harpist and educator.

Biography

Madame de Genlis was born of a noble but impoverished Burgundian family, at the château of Champcéry, in Issy-l'Évêque

Issy-l'Évêque

Issy-l'Évêque is a commune in the Saône-et-Loire department in the region of Bourgogne in eastern France.-References:*...

, Saône-et-Loire

Saône-et-Loire

Saône-et-Loire is a French department, named after the Saône and the Loire rivers between which it lies.-History:When it was formed during the French Revolution, as of March 4, 1790 in fulfillment of the law of December 22, 1789, the new department combined parts of the provinces of southern...

.
When six years of age she was received as a canoness into the noble chapter of Alix near Lyon

Lyon

Lyon , is a city in east-central France in the Rhône-Alpes region, situated between Paris and Marseille. Lyon is located at from Paris, from Marseille, from Geneva, from Turin, and from Barcelona. The residents of the city are called Lyonnais....

, with the title of Madame la Comtesse de Lancy, taken from the town of Bourbon-Lancy. Her entire education, however, was conducted at home. In 1758, in Paris

Paris

Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

, her skill as a harp

Harp

The harp is a multi-stringed instrument which has the plane of its strings positioned perpendicularly to the soundboard. Organologically, it is in the general category of chordophones and has its own sub category . All harps have a neck, resonator and strings...

ist and her vivacious wit speedily attracted admiration. In her sixteenth year she was married to Charles-Alexis Brûlart de Genlis, a colonel

Colonel

Colonel , abbreviated Col or COL, is a military rank of a senior commissioned officer. It or a corresponding rank exists in most armies and in many air forces; the naval equivalent rank is generally "Captain". It is also used in some police forces and other paramilitary rank structures...

 of grenadiers, who afterwards became Marquis

Marquis

Marquis is a French and Scottish title of nobility. The English equivalent is Marquess, while in German, it is Markgraf.It may also refer to:Persons:...

 de Sillery and de Genlis, but this was not allowed to interfere with her determination to remedy her incomplete education, and to satisfy a taste for acquiring and imparting knowledge.

Some years later, through the influence of her aunt, Charlotte-Jeanne Béraud de la Haye de Riou, marquise de Montesson

Charlotte-Jeanne Béraud de la Haye de Riou, marquise de Montesson

Charlotte-Jeanne Béraud de La Haye de Riou was a mistress to Louis Philippe d'Orléans, duc d'Orléans, and ultimately, his wife; however, Louis XV would not allow her to become the duchesse. She wrote and acted in several plays...

, who had been clandestinely married to the Louis Philippe d'Orléans

Louis Philippe I, Duke of Orléans

Louis Philippe d'Orléans known as le Gros , was a French nobleman, a member of a cadet branch of the House of Bourbon, the dynasty then ruling France. The First Prince of the Blood after 1752, he was the most senior male at the French court after the immediate royal family. He was the father of...

, she entered the Palais Royal

Palais Royal

The Palais-Royal, originally called the Palais-Cardinal, is a palace and an associated garden located in the 1st arrondissement of Paris...

 as a lady-in-waiting

Lady-in-waiting

A lady-in-waiting is a female personal assistant at a royal court, attending on a queen, a princess, or a high-ranking noblewoman. Historically, in Europe a lady-in-waiting was often a noblewoman from a family highly thought of in good society, but was of lower rank than the woman on whom she...

 to their daughter-in-law Louise Marie Adélaïde de Bourbon

Louise Marie Adélaïde de Bourbon

Louise Marie Adélaïde de Bourbon, Duchess of Orléans, , was the daughter of Louis Jean Marie de Bourbon, Duke of Penthièvre and of Princess Maria Theresa Felicitas of Modena. At the death of her brother, Louis Alexandre de Bourbon, prince de Lamballe, she became the wealthiest heiress in France...

, Duchess of Chartres as the wife of their heir Philippe d'Orléans, Duke of Chartres

Louis Philippe II, Duke of Orléans

Louis Philippe Joseph d'Orléans commonly known as Philippe, was a member of a cadet branch of the House of Bourbon, the ruling dynasty of France. He actively supported the French Revolution and adopted the name Philippe Égalité, but was nonetheless guillotined during the Reign of Terror...

.

She acted with great energy and zeal as governess to the daughters of the family, and was in 1781 appointed by the duke of Chartres to the responsible office of gouverneur of his sons

Governess of the Children of France

In France, the Governess of the Children of France , was charged with the education of the children and grand children of the monarch. The holder of the office was taken from the highest ranking nobility of France...

, a bold step which led to the resignation of all the tutor

Tutor

A tutor is a person employed in the education of others, either individually or in groups. To tutor is to perform the functions of a tutor.-Teaching assistance:...

s as well as to much social scandal, though there is no reason to suppose that the intellectual interests of her pupils suffered on that account.

The better to carry out her ingenious theories of education, she wrote several works for their use, the best known of which are the Théâtre d'éducation (4 vols., 1779–1780), a collection of short comedies for young people, Les Annales de la vertu (2 vols., 1781) and Adèle et Théodore (3 vols., 1782). Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve

Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve

Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve was a literary critic and one of the major figures of French literary history.-Early years:...

 tells how she anticipated many modern methods of teaching. History was taught with the help of magic lantern

Magic lantern

The magic lantern or Laterna Magica is an early type of image projector developed in the 17th century.-Operation:The magic lantern has a concave mirror in front of a light source that gathers light and projects it through a slide with an image scanned onto it. The light rays cross an aperture , and...

 slides and her pupils learnt botany

Botany

Botany, plant science, or plant biology is a branch of biology that involves the scientific study of plant life. Traditionally, botany also included the study of fungi, algae and viruses...

 from a practical botanist during their walks.

In 1789 Madame de Genlis showed herself favourable to the French Revolution

French Revolution

The French Revolution , sometimes distinguished as the 'Great French Revolution' , was a period of radical social and political upheaval in France and Europe. The absolute monarchy that had ruled France for centuries collapsed in three years...

, but the fall of the Girondins in 1793 compelled her to take refuge in Switzerland

Switzerland

Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....

 along with her pupil Mademoiselle d'Orléans. In this year her husband, the marquis de Sillery, from whom she had been separated since 1782, was guillotine

Guillotine

The guillotine is a device used for carrying out :executions by decapitation. It consists of a tall upright frame from which an angled blade is suspended. This blade is raised with a rope and then allowed to drop, severing the head from the body...

d. An "adopted" (actually natural) daughter, Stephanie Caroline Anne Syms, called Pamela, had been married to Lord Edward Fitzgerald

Lord Edward FitzGerald

Lord Edward FitzGerald was an Irish aristocrat and revolutionary. He was the fifth son of the 1st Duke of Leinster and the Duchess of Leinster , he was born at Carton House, near Dublin, and died of wounds received in resisting arrest on charge of treason.-Early years:FitzGerald spent most of his...

 at Tournai

Tournai

Tournai is a Walloon city and municipality of Belgium located 85 kilometres southwest of Brussels, on the river Scheldt, in the province of Hainaut....

 in the preceding 27 December. (Another "adopted" (actually natural) daughter, Hermine Syms, married Jacques Collard de Montjouy.) In 1794 Madame de Genlis fixed her residence at Berlin

Berlin

Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...

, but, having been expelled by the orders of Frederick William II of Prussia

Frederick William II of Prussia

Frederick William II was the King of Prussia, reigning from 1786 until his death. He was in personal union the Prince-Elector of Brandenburg and the sovereign prince of the Principality of Neuchâtel.-Early life:...

, she afterwards settled in Hamburg

Hamburg

-History:The first historic name for the city was, according to Claudius Ptolemy's reports, Treva.But the city takes its modern name, Hamburg, from the first permanent building on the site, a castle whose construction was ordered by the Emperor Charlemagne in AD 808...

, where she supported herself for some years by writing and painting. After the revolution of 18th Brumaire

Brumaire

Brumaire was the second month in the French Republican Calendar. The month was named after the French word brume which occurs frequently in France at that time of the year....

 (1799) she was permitted to return to France, and was received with favour by Napoleon Bonaparte

Napoleon I of France

Napoleon Bonaparte was a French military and political leader during the latter stages of the French Revolution.As Napoleon I, he was Emperor of the French from 1804 to 1815...

, who gave her apartments at the arsenal, and afterwards assigned her a pension of 6000 francs.

During this period she wrote largely, and produced, in addition to some historical novels, her best romance, Mademoiselle de Clermont (1802). Madame de Genlis had lost her influence over her old pupil Louis Philippe

Louis-Philippe of France

Louis Philippe I was King of the French from 1830 to 1848 in what was known as the July Monarchy. His father was a duke who supported the French Revolution but was nevertheless guillotined. Louis Philippe fled France as a young man and spent 21 years in exile, including considerable time in the...

, who visited her but seldom, although he allowed her a small pension. Her government pension was discontinued by Louis XVIII

Louis XVIII of France

Louis XVIII , known as "the Unavoidable", was King of France and of Navarre from 1814 to 1824, omitting the Hundred Days in 1815...

, and she supported herself largely by her pen.

Her later years were occupied largely with literary quarrels, notably with that which arose out of the publication of the Diners du Baron d'Holbach

Baron d'Holbach

Paul-Henri Thiry, Baron d'Holbach was a French-German author, philosopher, encyclopedist and a prominent figure in the French Enlightenment. He was born Paul Heinrich Dietrich in Edesheim, near Landau in the Rhenish Palatinate, but lived and worked mainly in Paris, where he kept a salon...

(1822), a volume in which she set forth with a good deal of sarcastic cleverness the intolerance, the fanaticism, and the eccentricities of the philosophes of the 18th century. She survived until 31 December 1830, and saw her former pupil, Louis Philippe, seated on the throne of France.

The numerous works of Madame de Genlis (which considerably exceed eighty), comprising prose and poetical compositions on a vast variety of subjects and of various degrees of merit, owed much of their success to advantageous causes which have long ceased to operate. They are useful, however (especially the voluminous Mémoires inédits sur le XVIII' siècle, 10 vols, 1825), as furnishing material for history.

Britain

Madame de Genlis was and is best known for her children's works. In Britain

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

, many readers who were skeptical of French philosophy in general, welcomed her books because they presented many of Rousseau's

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...

 methods while at the same time attacking his principles. Moreover, they were relieved that her books did not promote the two concepts most association with the French in the British mind: libertinism and Roman Catholicism. British audiences were also delighted with her innovative educational methods, particularly her morality plays. According to Magdi Wahba

Magdi Wahba

Magdi Wahba was an Egyptian university professor, Johnsonian scholar, and lexicographer.He was born in Alexandria in 1925 the son of a high court judge and later cabinet minister. His mother had been educated at Cheltenham Ladies' College and Oxford University...

, a third important reason for Madame de Genlis' popularity in Britain was a "misapprehension" regarding her character. British readers believed that she was as moral as the Baronne d'Almane in Adèle et Théodore when in fact she was as fatally flawed as any other human. The British public discovered that Madame de Genlis was not a moral paragon when she fled there to escape the French Revolution

French Revolution

The French Revolution , sometimes distinguished as the 'Great French Revolution' , was a period of radical social and political upheaval in France and Europe. The absolute monarchy that had ruled France for centuries collapsed in three years...

 in 1791. While she lost the esteem of some of her friends such as Frances Burney, the sales of her books never slowed down.

Literature

She appeares among others in the works of the following writers: Honoré de Balzac

Honoré de Balzac

Honoré de Balzac was a French novelist and playwright. His magnum opus was a sequence of short stories and novels collectively entitled La Comédie humaine, which presents a panorama of French life in the years after the 1815 fall of Napoleon....

 (Illusions perdues), Leo Tolstoy

Leo Tolstoy

Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy was a Russian writer who primarily wrote novels and short stories. Later in life, he also wrote plays and essays. His two most famous works, the novels War and Peace and Anna Karenina, are acknowledged as two of the greatest novels of all time and a pinnacle of realist...

 (War and Peace

War and Peace

War and Peace is a novel by the Russian author Leo Tolstoy, first published in 1869. The work is epic in scale and is regarded as one of the most important works of world literature...

), Victor Hugo

Victor Hugo

Victor-Marie Hugo was a Frenchpoet, playwright, novelist, essayist, visual artist, statesman, human rights activist and exponent of the Romantic movement in France....

 (Les Misérables

Les Misérables

Les Misérables , translated variously from the French as The Miserable Ones, The Wretched, The Poor Ones, The Wretched Poor, or The Victims), is an 1862 French novel by author Victor Hugo and is widely considered one of the greatest novels of the nineteenth century...

) and Jane Austen

Jane Austen

Jane Austen was an English novelist whose works of romantic fiction, set among the landed gentry, earned her a place as one of the most widely read writers in English literature, her realism and biting social commentary cementing her historical importance among scholars and critics.Austen lived...

 (Emma

Emma

Emma, by Jane Austen, is a novel about the perils of misconstrued romance. The novel was first published in December 1815. As in her other novels, Austen explores the concerns and difficulties of genteel women living in Georgian-Regency England; she also creates a lively 'comedy of manners' among...

). She is also mentioned by Sartre in "Nausea".