Unlike her daughter, she was not a professed blue-stocking. But she had a strong affection for theology, in which she inclined (like the great majority of the religious and intelligent laity of her time in France) to the Jansenist side. Her favourite author in this class was Nicole. She has been reproached for her fond ness for the romances of Mlle. de Scudery and the rest of her school. But probably many persons who make that reproach have themselves never read the works they despise, and are ignorant of how much merit there is in them. In purely literary criticism Madame de Sevigne was no mean expert. Her preference for Corneille over Racine has much more in it than the fact that the elder poet had been her favourite before the younger began to write ; and her remarks on La Fontaine and some other authors are both judicious and independent. Nor is she wanting in original reflections of no ordinary merit. But to enjoy her work in its most enjoyable point—the combination of fluent and easy style with quaint archaisms and tricks of phrase—it must be read as she wrote it, and not in the trimmed and corrected version of Perrin and Madame de Simiane.
BIBLIOGRAPHY.—Madame de Sevigne's correspondence with Bussy Rabutin appeared in his Memoirs and Correspondence, partly in the year of her death, partly next year. The remainder was not printed in any form for 3o years. The number of unauthorized editions of the letters which appeared, taken from copies of letters privately circulated caused Madame de Simiane (d. 1737), the daughter of Madame de Grignan, to give an authorized version. This appeared under the care of the Chevalier de Perrin in 6 vols. (1734-37). It con tained only the letters to Madame de Grignan, and these were sub jected to editing rather more careful than conscientious, the results of which were never thoroughly removed until recently. Madame de Simiane, who possessed her mother's replies, is said to have burnt the whole of these from religious motives; this phrase is explained by Madame de Grignan's Cartesianism, which is supposed to have led her to expressions alarming to orthodoxy. There were numerous omissions and alterations of style and language. Perrin followed up this edition in 1751 with a volume of supplementary letters to other persons, and in 1754 published his last edition of the whole, which was long the standard (8 vols., Paris). During the last half of the 18th century numerous editions of the whole or parts appeared with important additions, such as that of 1756, giving for the first time the letters to Pomponne on the Fouquet trial; that of 1773, giving letters to Moulceau ; that of 1775, giving for the first time the Bussy letters separate from his memoirs, etc. An important col lected edition of all these fragments, by the Abbe de Vauxcelles, appeared in 18o1 (Paris, An. IX.) in io vols.; five years later Gou
velle (Paris, 1806, 8 vols.) introduced the improvement of chronolog ical order ; this was reprinted in 12 vols. (Paris, 1819) with some more unpublished letters which had separately appeared meanwhile. In the same year appeared the first edition of M. de Monmerque. From that date continual additions of unpublished letters were made, in great part by the same editor, and at last the whole was remodelled on MS. copies (the originals unfortunately are available for but few) in the edition called Des Grands Ecrivains, which M. de Monmerque began, but which owing to his death had to be finished by MM. Regnier, Paul Mesnard and Sommer (1862-68). This, which super sedes all others (even a handsome edition published during its appearance by M. Silvestre de Sacy), consists of 12 volumes of text, notes, etc., two volumes of lexicon and an album of plates. It contains all the published letters to and from Madame de Sevigne, with the replies where they exist, with all those letters to and from Madame de Simiane (many of which had been added to the main body) that contain any interest. To it must be added two volumes (printed uniformly) of Lettres inedites, published by M. Ch. Capmas in 1876 and containing numerous variants and additions from a ms. copy discovered in an old curiosity shop at Dijon. Of less elaborate and costly editions that in the collection Didot (6 vols., v.d.) is the best, though, it contains an adulterated text. There are many Eng lish translations of the Letters. One of the early English translations, was reprinted, with additions, and with a preface by Madame Ducloux in 1928 (so vols.). Another edition, with introduction by A. E. Newton (7 vols.) also appeared in 1928.
Works on Madame de Sevigne are innumerable. Besides essays by nearly all the great French critics from Sainte-Beuve (Portraits de femmes) to M. Brunetiere (Etudes critiques) , the work of F. Combes, Madame de Sevigne, historien (1885), and G. Boissier's vol ume in the Grands Ecrivains Francais 0880, should be consulted. The biography by Paul Mesnard is nearly exhaustive, but the most elaborate biographical book is that of Walckenaer (3rd ed., Paris, 1856, 5 vols.), to which should be added the remarkable Histoire de Mme. de Sivigne of Aubenas (Paris and St. Petersburg, 1842). In English an excellent little book by Miss Thackeray (Lady Ritchie) 0880 may be recommended, and also Janet Aldis's Mme de Sivigne: The Queen of Letter-writers (19°7). Most of the editions have por traits.