EPINAY, LOUISE FLORENCE PETRONILLE TARDIEU D'ESCLAVELLES D' French writer, was born at Valenciennes on March 11, 1726. She is well known on account of her liaisons with Rousseau and Baron von Grimm, and her acquaintance with Diderot, D'Alembert, D'Hol bach and other French men of letters. Her marriage with her cousin Denis Joseph de La Live d'Epinay, a collector-general of taxes was an unhappy one; and Louise d'Epinay obtained a formal separation in 1749. She settled in the château of La Chevrette in the valley of Montmorency, and there received a number of distinguished visitors. Conceiving a strong attachment for J. J. Rousseau, she furnished for him in 1756 in the valley of Mont morency a cottage which she named the "Hermitage," and in this retreat he found for a time the quiet rural pleasures he praised so highly. Rousseau, in his Confessions, affirmed that the in clination was all on her side; but as, after her visit to Geneva, Rousseau became her bitter enemy, little weight can be given to his statements. Her intimacy with Grimm, which began in marks a turning-point in her life, for under his influence she escaped from the somewhat compromising conditions of her life at La Chevrette. In 17 5 she paid a long visit to Geneva, where she was a constant guest of Voltaire. In Grimm's absence from France (1775-76), Madame d'Epinay continued, under the superintendence of Diderot, the correspondence he had begun with various European sovereigns. She spent most of her later life at La Briche, a small house near La Chevrette, in the society of Grimm and of a small circle of men of letters. She died on April 17, 1783. Her Conversations d'Emilie (1774), composed for the education of her grand-daughter, Emilie de Belsunce, was crowned by the French Academy in 1783. The Memoires et Cor respondance de Mme. d'Epinay, ren f ermant un grand nombre de lettres inedites de Grimm, de Diderot, et de Rousseau, ainsi que des details, etc., was published at Paris (1818) from a ms. which she had bequeathed to Grimm. The Memoires are writ ten in the form of an autobiographic romance, in which Madame d'Epinay figures as Madame de Montbrillant, Rene is generally recognized as Rousseau, Volx as Grimm, Garnier as Diderot. All the letters and documents published along with the Memoires are genuine. Many of Madame d'Epinay's letters are contained in the Correspondence de l'abbe Galiani (1818) . Two anonymous works, Lettres a mon fils (Geneva, 17 5 2) and Mes tmoments heureux (Geneva, 1759), are also by Madame d'Epinay. See Rousseau's Confessions; Lucien Perey [Mlle. Herpin] and Gas ton Maugras, La Jeunesse de Mme. d'Epinay, les dernieres annees de Mme. d'Epinay (1882-83) ; Sainte-Beuve, Causeries du lundi, vol. ii.; Edmond Scherer, Etudes sur la litterature contemporaine, vols. iii. and vii. There are editions of the Memoires by L. Enault (18S5) and by P. Boiteau (1865) ; and an English translation, with introduction and notes (1897), by J. H. Freese.