ABSTRACT
The Dames des Roches, “mere et fille” (Madeleine Neveu [1520-1587] and Catherine Fradonnet [1542-1587]), were prized in their lifetimes as erudite writers and celebrated salon hostesses. We know little of Madeleine des Roches’s early years. She was probably acquainted with the young humanists and poets who contributed to the city of Poitiers’s first period of literary fame (1545-1555) and who would later form part of the literary group of the Pleiade. She was married twice to highly respected lawyers; she had three chilO dren, two of whom died in early infancy. She concerned herself exclusively with the education of Catherine and likely hired tutors in Latin, Greek, and Italian for her daughter. Catherine des Roches was so devoted to her mother and to their common enterprise of writing and publishing their works toO gether that she never married.
