Marie-Jeanne Riccoboni (1713–1792)

Marie-Jeanne Laboras de Mézières was born in Paris into a bourgeois French family. In 1734 or 1735, at about age 21, she married Antoine François Riccoboni, an actor and playwright, from whom she soon separated. She herself became an actress and had moderate success on the stage. She launched her literary career in 1745 by publishing a continuation of Marivaux's unfinished novel La vie de Marianne (The Life of Marianne). It was followed by three epistolary novels in quick succession: Lettres de Mistris Fanni Butlerd (1757), Histoire de M. le marquis de Cressy (1758), and Lettres de Milady Juliette Catesby (1759). The latter was translated by writer Frances Brooke into English the following year, and became an immediate bestseller, going through six editions. Besides further novels, Madame Riccoboni also wrote a play and was the editor of a periodical called L'Abeille (The Bee). She influenced other writers, including Pierre Choderlos de Laclos, author of Les Liaisons Dangereuses. Madame Riccoboni was awarded a small pension from the French crown, but the Revolution deprived her of it, and she died in Paris in 1792 in great poverty. She corresponded with Denis Diderot, David Hume, David Garrick, and other personalities of her day; these letters provide a valuable account of life in France during the latter part of the 18th century.