SCUDERY, MADELEINE DE French novelist, sister of Georges de Scudery (q.v.), established herself in Paris with her brother. She was at once admitted to the Ram bouillet coterie, afterwards established a salon of her own under the title of the Societe du samedi, and for the last half of the I7th century, under the pseudonym of "Sapho" or her own name, was acknowledged as the first blue-stocking of France and of the world. She formed with Pellisson a close friendship only termi nated by his death in 5693. Her lengthy novels, such as Artamene, ou le Grand Cyrus (To vols. 1648-1653), Clelie (lc) vols. 1661), Ibrahim, ou l'illustre Bassa (4 vols. /66r), Almahide, ou l'esclave reine (8 vols. 1661-1663) were the delight of all Europe, including persons of the wit and sense of Madame de Sevigne. Vith classical or Oriental personages for nominal heroes and heroines, the whole language and action are taken from the fashionable ideas of the time, and the personages can be identified either really or colourably with Mademoiselle de Scudery's con temporaries. In Clelie, Herminius represents Paul Pellisson; Scaurus and Lyriane were Paul Scarron and his wife (afterwards Mme. de Maintenon) ; and in the description of Sapho in vol. x. of Le Grand Cyrus the author paints herself. It is in Clelie that the famous Carte de Tendre appeared, a description of an Arcadia, where the river of Inclination waters the villages of Billet Doux, Petits Soins and so forth. The interminable length of the stories is made out by endless conversations and, as far as incidents go, chiefly by successive abductions of the heroines, conceived and related in the most decorous spirit, for Made moiselle de Scudery is nothing if not decorous.
In that early day of the novel prolixity did not repel. "Sapho" had really studied mankind in her contemporaries and knew how to analyse and describe their characters with fidelity and point. Moreover her novels had the interest always attaching to the roman a clef. She was a real mistress of dialogue. She had a distinct vocation as a pedagogue, and is compared by Sainte Beuve to Mme. de Genlis. She could moralize—a favourite em ployment of the time—with sense and propriety. Though she was incapable of the exquisite prose of Mme. de Sevigne and some others of her contemporaries, her purely literary merits were considerable. Madeleine survived her brother more than thirty years, and in her later days published numerous volumes of con versations, to a great extent extracted from her novels, thus forming a kind of anthology of her work. She outlived her vogue to some extent, but retained a circle of friends to whom she was always the "incomparable Sapho." She died on June 2, Her Life and Correspondence were published at Paris by MM. Rathery and Boutron in 1873. An amusing sketch of her is to be found in vol. iv. of Sainte-Beuve's Causeries du lundi. Georges de Scudery is sketched by Theophile Gautier in his Grotesques. See also V. Cousin, La Societe francaise au siecle, vol. ii.