GENLIS, STEPHANIE-FELICITE-DUCREST DE ST. AUBIN, COUNTESS DE, was born near Autun, in 1746, of a respectable but not rich family. She became at an early age a proficient in music, and her skill as a player introduced her to some persons of distinction, in whose company she had an opportunity of studying the manners and adopting the language of refined society. Her first writings exhibited an elegance and fluency of diction, which attracted attention, and excited the interest of the Count de Geniis, who married her. She was soon after entrusted with the education of the children of the Duke of Orleans, and one of her pupils, Louis Philippe, was after wards king of the French. In the course of her task, to which she brought great assiduity and zeal, she wrote several works for the use of her pupils, which were afterwards published, namely, 'Les Veillees du Château," Les Annales de la Vertu," Le Theatre de l'Education,' ' Adele et Theodore,' &c. These rank among her most useful works, and they have had and perhaps still have an extensive popularity. After the French revolution broke out, Madame de Genlis, who had been at first its partisan, was obliged to seek safety in flight ; she went successively to England, Belgium, Switzerland, and lastly to Hamburg, followed everywhere by the suspicions which her avowed sentiments, her connections with several leading revolutionists (among others with Lord Edward Fitzgerald, who married her adopted daughter, Pamela), and the slander of the royalist emigrants, raised against her. At Hamburg she wrote a kind of political work styled 'Les Chevaliers du Cygne,' which did not add to her reputation either as an author or a moralist. She afterwards attempted a justification
of her own conduct and -sentiments= Precis de la Conduite de Madame de Geniis.' She returned to France under the consulship of Bonaparte, who had a favourable opinion of her talents, and she became one of his admirers and panegyrists. After her return to Paris she wrote 'De l'Influence des Femmes sur la Litterature,' in which she replied to the attacks of some of the principal literary men of Paris, and Ginguene among the rest ; and she also assailed some authors of her own sex, among others, Madame Cottin.
The pen of Madame de Geniis seemed inexhaustible. After the restoration she wrote in defence of monarchy and of religion; her work, 'Les Diners du Baron d'Holbach,' which is in a great measure historical, and in which she exposes the weaknesses and the intrigues of the so-called philosophers of the 18th century, made a great sensa tion, and roused the auger of the freethinking party in France. It is a work that contains some curious information. She also wrote Dictionnaire Critique et Raisonne des Etiquettes de la Cour,' 2 vols. 8vo, 1818. When she was past eighty years of age she wrote her memoirs. She lived to see the events of July 1830, and her former pupil raised to the throne. She died on the 31st of December 1830, aged eighty-four.
Besides the works mentioned above, Madame de Geniis wrote numerous novels, of which those styled 'La Duchesee de la Valliere,' 'Les Battuecas et Zuma,"ou la Decouverte du Quinquina,' are the best. Her works have been published together in 84 vols. 12mo.