ABSTRACT
Marie-Jeanne Riccoboni (1713-1792) was an important and influential figure in eighteenth-century French letters. An actress who turned to writing in mid career, she authored fiction and essays, translated and corresponded with some of the notables of her day. For her contemporaries, she was most of all a writer of novels whose works brought her popular success, critical acclaim, and a reputation that extended far beyond France. Often best-sellers with nuO merous editions, frequently imitated by others, and praised by the likes of Diderot and Grimm, her works continued to be re-edited and published in the nineteenth century. By the beginning of the twentieth century, however, she had become the forgotten novelist of Emily Crosby’s Une Romanciere oubliee. Crosby’s book drew Mme Riccoboni from the shadows but did not cast her in a very strong light, presenting her as a somewhat peripheral figure with close ties to the past and influenced by authors like Marivaux and Richardson. Recent criticism has brought her to the forefront, focusing instead on Riccoboni’s originality and her modernity: her concern with women’s issues and experience, her critique of social and sexual inequities, her demand for justice for the female sex. Her professionalism has been noted as the mark of a modO ern writer. An author who depended on her works for her income, she wrote not to fill her leisure but to sell, and was involved in the production and marO keting of her novels.
