ABSTRACT
Anne-Therese de Lambert was born in Paris on September 25, 1647, of an aristocratic family with upper-middle-class origins. Along with her sisters, she was raised in a convent and, at the age of eighteen, married the Marquis and Baron Henri de Lambert, a cavalry captain who later became governor of the city and duchy of Luxembourg. Of their four children, only two survived: Monique-Therese, born in 1669, and Henri-Fran^ois, born in 1677. Madame de Lambert’s husband died in 1686, leaving her in a precarious financial situO ation because her own paternal heritage had been contested by her mother. About ten years later, in 1698, having finally inherited a considerable fortune, Madame de Lambert settled in her newly bought Parisian residence, the northern portion of the Hotel de Nevers, close to the Palais-Royal, rue de Richelieu, where she lived until her death, on July 12, 1733. It is in the Hotel de Nevers that Madame de Lambert started hosting fashionable literary and intellectual gatherings, circles which regularly met on Tuesdays and WednesO days. She invited the most famous intellectuals of the time and the most soO cially influential figures. Fontenelle, Montesquieu, Houdar de la Motte, the Marquis of Agenson, and Marivaux were among her most famous and regular guests. Under Madame de Lambert’s impetus, the Hotel de Nevers quickly became the most important Parisian salon of the time, and remained so for twenty-five years.
