ABSTRACT
One of the most “illustrious women” of letters of seventeenth-century France, Madeleine de Scudery was born in 1607 in Le Havre, where her father held the position of governor of the port. After her father’s death in 1613, Madeleine and her older brother Georges were taken to Rouen to live with their uncle, who provided her with an exceptional education.1 In addition to the skills expected of a young woman of the lesser nobility, such as dancing, drawing, painting, and the lute (which she quickly abandoned as too timeconsuming), Madeleine pursued a wide variety of interests, including agriculO ture, gardening, medicinal botany, and cooking. Drawn to literature and history at an early age, she learned to speak and read Italian and Spanish as well as how to write and spell properly in French, at that time a rare accomO plishment for a woman.
