Les Lumières de Marie Leprince de Beaumont. Nouvelles données biographiques

Story-teller, journalist, novel-writer, well-thinking author, Marie Leprince de Beaumont (1711-1780) has a very contrasted reputation. Some of her contem¬ poraries judged her to be a dull and duplicitous bigot ; on the other hand, some of our contemporaries, following nineteenth-century editors of her edifying books, wrote her hagiography, or at least undervalued her confession written in an autobiographical letter published in 1906. The correspondence between her and her friend, lover, or husband, Thomas Pichon-Tyrrell (1700-1781), as well as several recently discovered archive documents, allow us to paint the picture of an independent woman, a female author conscious of her mission and a business woman, an adventurer, a Christian philosopher, perhaps a true 'femme des Lumières.Artigas-Menant Geneviève. Les Lumières de Marie Leprince de Beaumont. Nouvelles données biographiques. In: Dix-huitième Siècle, n°36, 2004. Femmes des Lumières. pp. 291-301