Customer Reviews

Madame de Sevigne: A Life and Letters

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Frances Mossiker has given us a wonderful compilation of noted epistolarian, Marie de Rabutin-Chantal(1626-1696), Madame de Sévigné's letters. Seventeenth-century France will come vibrantly alive while you read this book. Ms. Mossiker has meticulously researched this comprehensive biography.

I especially enjoyed the intimate look at her royal and commoner friends. Madame was friends with many of the brilliant thinkers of the day such as ballet writer Benserade and fable writer La Fontaine. Her descriptions of life at the court of Louis XIV are fascinating.

Most of the letters written were from Mother to Daughter. Their sometimes tense relationship is an engrossing psychological study. After a prolonged absence Madame de Sévigné learns her daughter is coming to visit:

"So you are coming!" she writes. "And I will have the pleasure of welcoming you, embracing you, giving you a thousand little tokens of my love and solicitude. Anticipation fills my heart with a sweet,deep joy..."

A thoroughly enjoyable, charming, divine book. Not to be missed!

(Musee Carnavalet in Paris is where Madame de Sévigné lived for almost twenty years. The building has been converted to a museum with a wonderful section devoted to her.)

I don't think there could be a better book of the life and times of Madame de Sevigne. Reading the letters alone is not enough, explanation is necessary. This book fulfills this need. All those confusing names are explained. The Madame was probably exactly the person she appears to us. This is a great book.

Originally, I'd intended to skim this well-researched book, while searching for background information for my own historical novel set during the reign of Louis XIV, but it immediately drew me in. After all of these years, I still consider it a wonderful look into the life of a popular court "celebrity" and her relationship, mostly through letters, with her too-distant daughter. Because she wrote to entertain her daughter, we know of the rumors and gossip that swept through the court about The Affair of Poisons and Louis' relationships with his old mistress, Madam de Montespan, and his very young new and last mistress, the duchesse de Fontanges. Mossiker's translations of the letters show the vivaciousness and other emotions of Mme de Sevigne as her daughter would have viewed them.

Author of The Wolf's Sun
A Devil Singing Small

Having read other books about Mme.de Sevigne, I found this one the most comprehensive, detailed and delightful, one of those books one comes back to re-read.