A Distinguished and Anonymous Female Presence: Louise d’Épinay and the Correspondance littéraire’s Imagined Community

One of the best-kept secrets in late eighteenth-century Paris was Friedrich Melchior Grimm and Jacques Henri Meister’s Correspondance littéraire (1753–1813). Although well-known today, the bimonthly periodical of literary and theater reviews, letters, philosophical essays, and all genres of literary composition remained clandestine throughout its sixty years of circulation. ¹ Its readership was exclusive, limited to a small set of northern European nobility carefully chosen by the Correspondance littéraire‘s founder and first director, Grimm (1753–1773), and then by his successor, Meister (1773–1813). The only woman to contribute regularly to the Correspondance littéraire was Louise d’Épinay, who assisted both directors for almost thirty years from 1755 to 1783. Today, considered a great femme de lettres (woman of letters) of the Enlightenment, d’Épinay is best known for her lengthy autobiographical novel, Histoire de madame de Montbrillant, a work that was published posthumously and is often studied alongside the writings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau ² ; her meditations on education, which comprise Lettres à mon fils, Lettre à la gouvernante de ma fille, and Les Conversations d’Émilie ³ ; and her correspondence, particularly the one she kept weekly for more than twelve years with the Neapolitan abbot Ferdinando Galiani. ⁴ At that time, however, with the exception of Les Conversations d’Émilie, which were published during her lifetime and for which she received the Prix Montyon from the Académie Française in 1783, her literary activities were known only to her close circle. Nonetheless, many of her literary contributions were circulated in the Correspondance littéraire and read by its distinguished subscribers, unaware of her authorship. ⁵

Indeed, presented as a modest femme aimable (gentlewoman) and most often referred to as “Mme ***,” d’Épinay was never named as author of her works in the Correspondance littéraire. However, the directors’ intimations allowed subscribers to recognize the recurring presence of a unique female voice and to follow the thread of her writings. In this essay, I will argue that Mme ***’s anonymous presence in the Correspondance littéraire helped Grimm to establish his reputation through her appealing representation of the worldly French society to which he belonged, and to create an ideal community in which Parisian philosophers and foreign nobles could communicate freely. ⁶ Further, I will argue that the cooptation and shaping of this virtual circle of readers and writers through a clandestine periodical benefited from the presence of an anonymous woman who embodied the ideal model of sociability in Paris. Following a brief introduction to d’Épinay’s contributions to the Correspondance littéraire, I will discuss first the heritage of gallantry in the second half of the eighteenth century, and then the practices of sociability upon which high society in ancien régime France relied to express distinction. I will elucidate the social dynamics embedded in d’Épinay’s writings, which contributed to the creation of an imagined community based on an elitist French social model in which women’s presence was a highly symbolic – and even essential – element.

Louise d’Épinay and the Correspondance littéraire

Grimm founded the Correspondance littéraire in 1753, four years after he departed from Ratisbonne to establish himself in Paris. ⁷ Like some of his predecessors, including Abbé Raynal, the young correspondant littéraire (literary correspondent) intended to write about what was published, discussed, and performed in the French capital, as he explained in his very first ordinaire (issue):

Dans les feuilles qu’on nous demande, nous nous arrêterons peu à ces brochures dont Paris est inondé tous les jours par les mauvais écrivains et par les petits beaux esprits, et qui sont un des inconvénients attachés à la littérature; mais nous tâcherons de rendre un compte exact et de faire une critique raisonnée des livres dignes de fixer l’attention du public. Les spectacles, cette partie si brillante de la littérature française, en feront une branche considérable; les arts n’y seront pas oubliés, et, en général, nous ne laisserons rien échapper qui soit digne de la curiosité des étrangers.

(In these pages, we will not linger long on those booklets written by bad writers and by little beaux esprits [pretentious minds] which everyday inundate Paris, and which are one of the unfortunate appendages of literature; rather, we will endeavor to give an accurate account and a well-reasoned critique of books worthy of the attention of the public. Theatre, that very shining part of French literature, will compose a considerable section; the arts will not be forgotten and, as a rule, no item meriting the curiosity of foreigners will be permitted to slip by without notice.) ⁸

It was with great freedom of tone and subject that Grimm hoped to satisfy this curiosity. What’s more, as he advised his first subscribers, he would not allow his judgments to be tempered by his bonds of friendship with some of the authors whose work he would discuss, implying that these authors would never know the periodical’s contents and that he would not let the friendship impact his editorial judgment. Similarly, the subscribers themselves were not to share the contents of the Correspondance littéraire with their entourages. Grimm insisted that his work remain secret from his contemporaries. ⁹ Although his motives may, as François Moureau suggests, ¹⁰ have been partially financial, intellectual prudence and social obligation were essential to such a choice. In this secret space, in addition to circulating numerous texts that could not have been printed without troubling their authors, Grimm curated a small, elected community composed of his close collaborators and a handful of readers who produced a comprehensive view of the literary community and French society of the time. This community was supported by a distinctive rhetoric which, from one issue of the Correspondance littéraire to the next, encouraged the creation and preservation of allegiances. Moreover, these ties were supported by the same forms of distinction and isolation that distinguished the gens du monde (socialites) in Enlightenment France.

Grimm’s periodical was not only secret, but also elitist. Its peak circulation, reached in the 1770s, was twelve or thirteenth subscribers. ¹¹ Although some were aware Grimm was working on such a production, no one in Paris aside from his close and regular collaborators, Denis Diderot and d’Épinay, had access to it. Having achieved a certain renown as the director of the Encyclopédie, Diderot’s name figured prominently in the Correspondance littéraire, and it is likely due to his reputation that Grimm was able to convince his first readers to subscribe. ¹² Quite the opposite is true for d’Épinay, for although her contributions to the periodical spanned many years and her responsibilities included that of supervising production when Meister was director, her name rarely appeared, and never as a writer. There was nevertheless an apparent female presence among the little group that surrounded Grimm and helped him produce his feuilles (pages). Accounts of the meetings and conversations that took place between Grimm and his close circle quickly came to occupy an important place in the periodical. A form of textual sociability also took shape and accompanied its critical discourse, reinforcing its elitism. If Diderot helped to ensure the intellectual and philosophical reputation of his friend’s project, d’Épinay’s anonymous persona graced it with a different form of prestige: that of a social order.

D’Épinay’s participation in the periodical can be approached from two particularly fruitful periods of collaboration that correspond to two general types of contributions: the pièces de circonstance, writings on education and philosophical dialogues circulated between 1755 and 1761; and the book reviews, fictional dialogues and theatre reviews produced predominantly in the first half of the 1770s. Grimm published not only texts d’Épinay wrote, but also many of the letters and poems she received. There are almost as many pieces addressed to Mme *** as texts written by or attributed to her. Current research recognizes d’Épinay as the author or co-author of seventy-three texts, and as the addressee of sixty. ¹³ Thus, her presence in the Correspondance littéraire was as an author, but also as a femme aimable and, most significantly, one connected with some of the major figures of her time, namely Voltaire, Diderot, and Galiani, whose wit was highly appreciated in le monde when he lived in Paris in the 1760s. The intimate and friendly social network that emerges through the Correspondance littéraire can be largely attributed to Mme ***’s presence and the gallant productions she wrote or in which she appeared.

Gallantry and Social Imagination

Literary and social practices were inextricably connected in the institution galante (gallant institution) that took shape in the mid-seventeenth century, as Delphine Denis shows. ¹⁴ But gallantry was not only a period in French history, but a cultural phenomenon that remained alive throughout the following centuries, as Alain Viala argues. ¹⁵ A hundred years after the trend in gallantry of the 1650s and 1660s, the typical representation of the gallant woman as modest, cheerful, witty, and a sensitive judge of artistic productions was still embedded in the social imagination.

What Denis calls the institution of gallantry implies a particular mode of auctorial representation by which a game of recognition was implicitly set up with the reader. ¹⁶ Gallantry was linked to a way of being together and to a literary representation of practices of sociability. These practices were governed by the desire to please and were often associated with a particular circle or society characterized by its exclusivity and isolation. The nicknames that were used in these circles, generally taken from Antiquity and bucolic literature, demonstrate this exclusion. By mediating the written records of its meetings, a group ensured retrouvailles for its readers, messages which were more or less efficacious according to a reader’s degree of proximity to the represented social group. ¹⁷ Nicknames permitted the circle to disguise its connivances through a simple literarization of social interactions, where readers exterior to the circle could miss the real referents entirely while still deriving pleasure from deciphering the characters and literary motifs. For those in the circle’s interior, perfectly acquainted with the events related in the texts, nicknames protected their society’s perimeter.

With time, the representation of women who took part in these gallant circles became crystallized in a collectively intelligible symbol, what we would call a stereotype today. While to be called gallant allegorically emphasized distinctive traits that only a privileged group could recognize, a title followed by asterisks, on the contrary, dispossessed its referent of all personality and instead attached her to a type. By implication, it also situated the designated woman among the beau monde (high society): the laws of feminine modesty deemed it improper to expose the name of a woman of society, on penalty of risking her reputation. An aristonym also conferred a certain prestige to its referent. ¹⁸ The example of the imaginary marquise to whom Donneau de Visé addressed his Mercure galant (1672–1710) illustrates this perfectly. Subsequent to the success of this formula, numerous other, similar marquises appeared, accompanying the development of the literary press. ¹⁹ A common understanding of the symbolic aura of this anonymous female figure established a social connection among authors and readers in many printed periodicals. Inherited from gallant society, it was most closely associated with the French elite and their distinctive social practices, and conjured a sensitive, high society woman interested in current cultural affairs.

The self-representation of Mme *** in the Correspondance littéraire is consistent with this ethos. It is in this same way that d’Épinay contributed to establishing, in Viala’s words, an “honest connivance” with subscribers, or a climate of exchange and implicit intelligence similar to the one characteristic of gallant societies in the previous century. ²⁰ This aristonym, while lending a hint of mystery to pique readers’ curiosity, also added to the prestige of Grimm’s pages. By belonging to the circle of this high society woman, he was able to set the scene of his production among an elite company. D’Épinay’s first contributions to the periodical, in fact, fully enacted an auctorial representation uniting representation and literarisation of social relations.

Many of the pieces written and received by Mme *** in the late 1750s are poésies de circonstance, that is, short texts connected to a specific time and social context and not intended for publication. ²¹ While literary pretensions and publication were disapproved of for women, this kind of writing was not. As Linda Timmermans and Myriam Maître show, the social celebration of the high society woman in the gallant world was accompanied by limitations on her literary practices. ²² D’Épinay’s contributions from that time consisted of letters and poems from her correspondence with Saint-Lambert, Margency, Desmahis, or Grimm himself. ²³ These texts appeared in the periodical throughout its production, even as the members of its tiny circle of contributors changed. The nicknames, customs, and plaisanteries (jokes) of Grimm’s intimate society created an exclusive window that was essential to establishing a sense of a community among the Correspondance littéraire‘s royal subscribers, scattered throughout Europe.

In the 15 August 1756 issue, Grimm figured in one of d’Épinay’s texts as “Tyran le Blanc” (white tyrant), ²⁴ a nickname given to him by the members of the circle that gathered in her home. Grimm introduced the piece as follows, initiating his subscribers to some of his society’s codes:

Voici une épître qui m’a été adressée par madame *** dont vous avez vu des Lettres à son fils. Elle partage entre ses enfants et ses amis un temps que les femmes de son âge donnent ordinairement aux plaisirs et à la dissipation. Pour l’intelligence de cette épître il faut savoir qu’elle appelle les amis avec lesquels elle passe sa vie, ses ours, que par la même plaisanterie on m’a donné dans sa société le nom de Tyran le Blanc et qu’on appelle académie chez elle à la campagne lorsque après la promenade tout le monde se r[a]ssemble dans le salon de compagnie pour travailler chacun de son côté dans son coin.

(This epistle was addressed to me by madame ***, whose Lettres à son fils you have been privy to. She divides, between her children and her friends, time that women of her age ordinarily devote to pleasures and dissipation. To appreciate this epistle in full, one must know she calls the friends she spends her life with her bears; by the same merry logic, in her society I am called Tyran le Blanc; and the hours we spend at her home in the country, after the walk, when everyone gathers in the sitting room to work, each in their own corner, are referred to as the academy.) ²⁵

In this short vignette, Mme *** is in her country home, removed from society and its frivolity. The text describes the gatherings held at the residence of “de cinq ours la souveraine” (the sovereign of five bears) ²⁶ – as Mme *** called herself – as being devoted to both amusements and work. The use of “académie” renders a scholarly dimension, and also reveals a vocabulary inherited from the similar naming practices of worldly sociabilities of the preceding century. Here, the disclosure of Grimm’s society nickname and his circle’s use of “ours” (bear) illustrates the gallant practice of nicknaming. If “Tyran le Blanc” was not a pastoral reference, it instead referred to a medieval Catalan novel whose French translation had been circulating for almost twenty years. ²⁷ The animal metaphor used in naming the guests was devoid of literary referent; however, when apposed with an adjective, it allowed d’Épinay to bestow her guests with specific nicknames. During the time when he still frequented the little society of which Diderot, Grimm and d’Épinay were part, Jean-Jacques Rousseau was called the ours Montagnard (mountain bear); Margency, for his part, was the ours musqué (perfumed bear). ²⁸

Many of the short pieces d’Épinay produced in the earlier years were inscribed in the bucolic imaginary closely associated with gallantry, including “Le Présent intéressé” (The gift motivated by self-interest; 15 October 1759), “Le Cadran de l’amour” (The dial of love; 1 November 1759), “Le Ruban” (The ribbon; 15 December 1759), “Tout vient à point à qui sait attendre” (All things come to him who waits; 15 January 1760), and “L’Origine des Apozèmes” (The Apozems’ origin; 15 March 1760). These texts were attributed to Mme ***, whose presence would become familiar to subscribers. Added to those distinguished practices particular to gallant circles, which were set to paper in and through the exchange of amateur poetry, were compositions in verse, which fell fully within the type of literary practices associated with these forms of sociability.

The choice to include this genre demonstrates the literary correspondent’s desire to inscribe his own network of sociability within the periodical’s pages. The issues that Grimm composed often fused philosophical reflection and literary critiques with the type of piece whose understanding is dependent upon initiation. He elevated his subscribers to the position of privileged observers and accomplices by lifting the veil of allusion and promoting an atmosphere of complicity, doubtlessly favourable to the transmission of his ideas. Saint-Lambert and Margency were often evoked in the pièces de circonstance addressed to or received by Mme *** in the 1750s. Following Galiani’s departure from Paris in 1769, his numerous letters – extracted from his correspondence with d’Épinay – were inserted and disseminated in the Correspondance littéraire, particularly in the early 1770s. From 1759, the year they made each other’s acquaintance in Geneva through d’Épinay, Grimm reserved a generous section of his periodical for Voltaire, another member of Mme ***’s network: indeed, the subscribers were afforded the pleasure of reading several letters he had written to his belle philosophe (darling philosopher). While these letters and gallant compositions provide a window into the processes of association and isolation, those written predominantly throughout the 1770s best expose the logic of exclusion that constitutes an essential part of the distinction of an elite.

Elitism and Intellectual Distinction

Particularly in the early 1770s, as she became more involved in the preparation and supervision of the periodical, d’Épinay wrote numerous reviews. At that time, Grimm travelled frequently and delegated his journalistic responsibilities to her and Diderot; when Diderot left, she remained the only one in Paris to take care of the besogne (work) with Meister, who Grimm eventually hired as his successor. At that time, d’Épinay’s contributions were no longer the society pieces of earlier years. Of forty entries inventoried between 1771 and 1775, there were nineteen literary reviews and thirteen pieces discussing theatre news. The most striking aspect of these writings is their unconcealed elitism, at odds with what was considered honnête (acceptable) for a femme du monde. Paradoxically, this characteristic may have helped to create a stronger connection with readers.

The self-representation present in d’Épinay’s reviews was shaped by the very mechanisms associated with the preservation of the social elite. ²⁹ This means of distinction was the cornerstone of the rhetoric adopted by Mme ***, for whom the “others” in the monde of the Correspondance littéraire were the authors, playwrights, or philosophers whose works were criticized. The following excerpt from one of Mme***’s performance reviews illustrates her style of communicating the reaction of the audience together with a critique of the play. Reporting the jeering from the parterre (orchestra), for example, as she did in her review of La Coquette de village by Anseaume and Saint-Amans, which appeared in the 15 October 1771 issue, allowed her to better emphasize a plot’s incoherence or a play’s shortcomings:

Cette pièce aurait été tout au plus supportable avec bien de la verve et de la folie dans le dialogue; mais elle manque de gaieté, et a toute la prétention d’un drame sérieux. Tous les personnages en sont malhonnêtes et tristes. Il n’y a eu de plaisanterie que celle qu’a faite le parterre sur la mésaventure de Subin en voyant sortir Colette du boudoir; mais sa joie n’a plus eu de bornes lorsqu’il l’a vue ensuite si déterminée à s’en retourner avec Subin, et Subin si déterminé à la reprendre. Je n’ai jamais vu de pièce plus complètement et plus constamment huée du commencement à la fin.

(At the very best, this play would have been tolerable if the dialogue were lively or humorous; but it lacks gaiety, and has all the aspirations of a serious drama. Every one of its characters is dishonest and sad. The only laughter came from the parterre upon Subin’s misfortune at seeing Colette exiting the boudoir; and their merriment knew no limits when they subsequently saw her so very determined to return with Subin, and Subin so determined to take her back. I have never seen a play more thoroughly jeered from beginning to end.) ³⁰

Remarking on the audience’s mirth allowed her to criticize the exaggerated ambitions and poorly constructed story simply by relaying the reactions of the least distinguished members of the public. She thus gave readers an impression of the rowdiness of the spectators, initiating them to another aspect of Parisian cultural life. In her review of Azémar and Fridzéri’s play Les Deux miliciens, the collaboratrice again mentions the exchanges with actors onstage which certain members of the public permitted themselves:

Jusqu’au moment du tirage de la milice chaque scène a été remplie par une lamentation. Lamentation de la jeune fille, lamentation de son amoureux (i.e. Justin), lamentation de la mère et d’un ami de Justin, lamentation du charbonnier … Lorsque le sort de Justin est décidé, les lamentations recommencent; le parterre se disposait à les égayer, mais l’ami du jeune milicien se dévoue et vient s’offrir pour marcher à sa place: combat de générosité; l’ami l’emporte et le subdélégué l’accepte d’autant plus volontiers, à ce qu’a prétendu un plaisant du parterre, qu’il est grand et bien fait, et que Justin n’a pas la taille requise. Cette remarque sur l’acteur Julien qui joue le rôle de Justin a eu un succès général.

(Up until the moment of the military lottery, every scene was filled with grief. The young girl’s grief, the grief of her lover [i.e., Justin], the grief of the mother, and of a friend of Justin, the collier’s grief … And when Justin’s fate is decided, there is yet more grief; the parterre was about to cheer them up, but the young soldier’s friend sacrifices himself and offers to go in his place: a battle of generosity follows; the friend is the victor, and the sub-delegate accepts him all the more willingly, as a joker in the parterre remarked, because the friend is tall and well built, whereas Justin is not of the requisite size. This remark about Julien, the actor playing the role of Justin, was an all-out success.) ³¹

The public’s “success” in entertaining itself, for lack of being entertained by the performance, gave d’Épinay another occasion to highlight the staleness of a performance by elaborating on a mechanism of association and exclusion: the play was objectively bad from all accounts. If mention of the parterre‘s response could both illustrate and reinforce her scorn and critical distance, the vast majority of the audience was most often looked to as a counterpoint to her argument – particularly in those rare play reviews where authors had found her favor.

If the parterre‘s reactions were offered in order to illustrate a play’s obvious defects, the opinions and reactions of the gens de goût (people of taste) were advanced to establish the critic’s superiority as a judge. D’Épinay also used this formula to demonstrate the excellence of a play that had, in her opinion, been underappreciated. Her critique of Diderot’s Le Fils naturel gives rise to the clearest portrayal of a public who, not unlike the actors, failed to appreciate an author’s merit:

Tous les mots de nature, de passion, enfin tout ce qui est l’ouvrage du génie, du sentiment, de la délicatesse, n’a été senti que d’un très petit nombre de spectateurs; mais ce qui s’appelle le public, et même les acteurs ne s’en sont pas doutés. La pièce a été mal jouée à deux ou trois endroits près, et la plus grande partie de la salle ne s’en est pas doutée. Ce qui n’a pas été applaudi attachait en silence le spectateur, et il ne s’en est pas douté. Enfin tout ce qui a été applaudi n’est pas, à mon avis, ce qui méritait le plus de l’être, et rien ne m’a tant prouvé que le goût des arts est sur son déclin en France que l’impression qu’a faite sur le public la représentation du Fils naturel.

(Every genuine or passionate utterance, in fact all that was the work of true genius, feeling and delicacy, was appreciated by only a very few spectators; but the public, as we call them, and even the actors, were oblivious. The play was poorly acted in two or three parts, but the greater part of the audience was oblivious. Those parts that went by without applause held the spectators in silence, but they were oblivious. Finally, everything that was applauded was not, in my mind, what most deserved to be, and nothing has proved to me more that the appreciation for the arts is on the decline in France than the public’s response to the performance of Le Fils naturel.) ³²

The public’s insensibility, stressed here by repetition of what they had seen and felt without suspecting, hoisted Mme*** to the rank of a femme de goût (woman of taste) most capable of recognizing, with tact and subtlety, beauty in a work and the merit of a creator.

What’s more, in the same critique d’Épinay subsequently associated her own judgement closely with that of Diderot, whom Grimm had tirelessly praised from the beginning of his production, as well as with that of a minuscule number of spectators: “Les gens de goût, le petit nombre de spectateurs à qui j’aime à m’en rapporter, et à qui M. Diderot ne dédaigne pas de plaire se sont trouvés affectés d’une manière différente de celle du public.” (The people of taste, the very few spectators whom I prefer to depend on, and whom M. Diderot is not averse to pleasing, found they were affected quite differently than the public.) ³³ Making a careful distinction between reading and dramatic interpretation, she described the response the play’s publication in 1757 had inspired, which had been lost in its dramatization. She also reproduced her exchange with Diderot on the subject. Here, the sociability of the text was not only based on d’Épinay’s description of the spectators’ reactions or her association with Grimm’s collaborators who shared the same ideas about the response the play elicited, but also based on the transcription of a conversation between gens de goût about a character’s moral integrity. The proliferation of these discursive strategies suggests that the subscribers, who trusted the Correspondance littéraire to inform their judgments of Parisian productions, were tacitly being urged to agree with its views and opinions. By virtue of exclusion, the rhetoric d’Épinay applied in her review emphasizes her merit and acuity. By virtue of praise, she associated this merit closely with Diderot, reminding readers of the collaborators’ intelligence in associating with Grimm. By virtue of association, she implicitly invited these readers to take part as privileged witnesses of an exclusive exchange, if only in their imaginations.

Conclusion

The social dimension at work throughout the Correspondance littéraire is rooted in logics of distinction, isolation, and exclusion, which allowed Grimm and his collaborators to assemble a small imagined community where writers could express themselves more freely while respecting the secrecy appropriate for correspondence with nobility. This community was based on the principles that presided over Parisian society in the second half of the eighteenth century. Born of the institution of gallantry and the link between literary practices and practices of sociability in the classical period, this world was associated with a particular representation of femininity that combined modesty, anonymity, and sensitivity. In this imaginary, Mme *** helped to endow Grimm’s periodical with a social anchoring with which its distinguished readership could identify. D’Épinay’s earlier contributions were fully inscribed in the imaginary and practices of gallantry; the social dynamics woven into her later critiques conformed to logics of adhesion – of the philosophers, their close circle, and the subscribers – and exclusion of the vast majority of the public as well as the authors discussed. Through these logics, d’Épinay’s writings cultivated a form of interaction that implicitly encouraged the sharing of opinions and ideas. If Grimm was able to profit from this secret space, first by offering a platform for the philosophical ideas he was promoting, and then by securing diplomatic assignments from some of his most illustrious subscribers, d’Épinay developed her body of work partly thanks to these writing conditions. There are many echoes between the texts that appeared in the Correspondance littéraire and the works of greater scope to which this femme de lettres otherwise devoted her time. This textual form of sociability, which guaranteed d’Épinay’s anonymity, also permitted and encouraged diverse writing practices. In this sense, the Correspondance littéraire seems to have acted as d’Épinay’s creative laboratory, a space where her writing could flourish.

1. From 1753 to the end of 1772, the Correspondance littéraire was produced twice a month. Starting from January 1773, it was produced once a month.[↑]
2. Louise d’Épinay, Les Contre-Confessions: Histoire de madame de Montbrillant, ed. Georges Roth (Paris: Mercure de France, 1951).[↑]
3. Louise d’Épinay, Les Conversations d’Émilie, ed. Rosena Davison (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 1996).[↑]
4. Louise d’Épinay and Ferdinando Galiani, Correspondance, ed. Daniel Maggetti in coll. with Georges Dulac (Paris: Desjonquères, 1992–95).[↑]
5. This aspect of her production is increasingly better known, due notably to the work that accompanies the critical edition of the Correspondance littéraire, which is ongoing under the direction of Ulla Kölving. Friedrich Melchior Grimm, Correspondance littéraire 1753–1773, ed. Ulla Kölving (Ferney-Voltaire: Centre international d’étude du XVIIIe siècle, 2006–).[↑]
6. See Pierre-Yves Beaurepaire, Le Mythe de l’Europe française au XVIIIe siècle: Diplomatie, culture et sociabilités au temps des Lumières (Paris: Autrement, 2007); Stéphane Van Damme, Paris, capitale philosophique: De la Fronde à la Révolution (Paris: Odile Jacob, 2005).[↑]
7. See Ulla Kölving, “Introduction générale,” in Grimm, Correspondance littéraire, vol. 1, 1753–1754, xxi–xxxi.[↑]
8. Grimm, Correspondance littéraire, vol. 1, 1753–1754, 3.[↑]
9. See Jochen Schlobach, “Secrètes correspondances: la fonction du secret dans les correspondances littéraires,” in De bonne main. La Communication manuscrite au XVIIIe siècle, ed. François Moureau (Paris: Universitas; Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 1993), 29–42; “Diderot, Grimm et la Correspondance littéraire,” in Diderot, Œuvres complètes, ed. Herbert Dieckmann et al., vol. 14, Arts et lettres (1739–1766); Critiques I, ed. Jean Varloot et al. (Paris: Hermann, 1980), xviii.[↑]
10. See François Moureau, “La Plume et le plomb,” in Moureau, De bonne main, 15.[↑]
11. See Kölving, “Introduction générale,” xxxii.[↑]
12. See ibid.[↑]
13. See Mélinda Caron, Écriture et vie de société: Les correspondances littéraires de Louise d’Épinay (1755–1783) (Montreal: Les Presses de l’Université de Montréal, 2017).[↑]
14. Delphine Denis, Le Parnasse galant. Institution d’une catégorie littéraire au XVIIe siècle (Paris: Champion, 2001).[↑]
15. Alain Viala, La France galante (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 2008).[↑]
16. Denis, Le Parnasse galant.[↑]
17. Ibid., 156.[↑]
18. See Gérard Leclerc, “Le Pseudonyme: Du masque à la marque,” in Le Sceau de l’œuvre (Paris: Seuil, 1998); Muriel Brot, “Écrire sans écrire: Les Compilateurs du XVIIIe siècle,” Littérales 37 (2006): 98.[↑]
19. See Mélinda Caron, “L’Épistolière mondaine anonyme dans les périodiques littéraires d’Ancien Régime,” in La Lettre et la presse: Poétiques de l’intime et culture médiatique au XIXe siècle, ed. Guillaume Pinson, Médias 19, September 2011.[↑]
20. Alain Viala, L’Esthétique galante (Toulouse: Société de littératures classiques, 1989), 15.[↑]
21. These texts were also called “pièces légères,” “petits vers,” “pièces galantes,” “pièces badines,” “pièces de société,” or “vers de société.” Nicole Masson, La Poésie fugitive au XVIIIe siècle (Paris: Honoré Champion, 2002), 16–18.[↑]
22. Myriam Maître, Les Précieuses: Naissance des femmes de lettres en France au XVIIe siècle (Paris: Champion, 1999); Linda Timmermans, L’Accès des femmes à la culture (1598–1715): Un débat d’idées de Saint François de Sales à la Marquise de Lambert (Paris: Champion, 1993).[↑]
23. Letters to the marquis de Saint-Lambert, the seigneur de Margency, and Desmahis circulated in the Correspondance littéraire from 15 September 1756 to 15 September 1759. Grimm probably shared a poem he wrote to d’Épinay in the ordinaire of 1 September 1755; he also sent to his subscribers a piece she wrote for him entitled “À Tyran le Blanc,” discussed below.[↑]
24. Grimm, Correspondance littéraire, ed. Robert Granderoute, vol. 3, 1756, 203–4.[↑]
25. Grimm, Correspondance littéraire, vol. 3, 202.[↑]
26. Louise d’Épinay, “À Tyran le Blanc,” in Grimm, Correspondance littéraire, vol. 3, 203.[↑]
27. This onomastic choice echoes the title of a novel by Joanot Martorell (1413–1468), Tirant le Blanc, published for the first time in Catalan in 1490 and translated into French by the Comte de Caylus in 1737.[↑]
28. “Lettre de M. Desmahis à madame de ***. De la Ronce près Gien en 1756,” in Grimm, Correspondance littéraire, ed. Ulla Kölving, vol. 4, 1757, 150.[↑]
29. See Antoine Lilti, Le Monde des salons: Sociabilité et mondanité à Paris au XVIIIe siècle (Paris: Fayard, 2005).[↑]
30. “Article de Madame ***,” in “Feuilles littéraires,” Bibliothèque historique de la Ville de Paris, C.P. 3856, 144v. The spelling of the excerpts taken from this and the following manuscript has been modernized.[↑]
31. 1 October 1770 issue.”Article de Madame ***,” in “Feuilles littéraires,” CP3855, 158–158v.[↑]
32. Ibid., 169.[↑]
33. Ibid.[↑]