Earlier this year, I was following via the Internet a book auction held in Génicourt, a village northwest of Paris. Having bid successfully on a … Continue reading
At the beginning of Madame d’Aulnoy’s fairy tale “The White Cat,” an aging and timorous king sets up a winner-take-all competition between his sons: “whichever … Continue reading
A longstanding scholarly consensus holds that German translations of Madame d’Aulnoy’s fairy tales did not appear until the second half of the eighteenth century, starting … Continue reading
This year should not go by without a brief salute to Pierre-Daniel Huet (1630-1721), the Norman polymath who was one of the most brilliant and … Continue reading
As biographers have occasionally pointed out, Madame d’Aulnoy was related on the maternal side to one of the most prominent families at the French royal … Continue reading
Among the many mysteries surrounding the life and works of Madame d’Aulnoy is the question of her title of nobility: was she a baroness or … Continue reading
Laidronnette, the noble but ugly heroine of Madame d’Aulnoy’s fairy tale “Serpentin vert,” begs her royal parents to “allow her to go and shut herself … Continue reading
The summer of 1720 in France brought not only an outbreak of bubonic plague in Marseille and the economically disastrous bursting of John Law’s Mississippi … Continue reading
According to many critics today, Madame d’Aulnoy’s contes des fées originated in the sociable setting of her salon. Jack Zipes, the doyen of American fairy-tale … Continue reading
As Voltaire once remarked (or was it Winston Churchill?), forgery surely is the world’s second-oldest profession. This universal truth is confirmed by the history of … Continue reading
Marie-Catherine Le Jumel de Barneville, baronne d’Aulnoy, died in Paris on January 13, 1705 – this has been known for a long time. But when … Continue reading
Six months ago this blog presented the very rare first edition of Marie-Catherine d’Aulnoy’s Les Contes des fées, of which a complete set (including engraved … Continue reading
In the spring of 2001, while surveying the scholarship on the mysterious Lettres portugaises, I encountered an annoying bibliographical redundancy: a seemingly new article by … Continue reading
The term “fairy tale” originated in 1697, when Marie-Catherine Le Jumel de Barneville, baronne d’Aulnoy, gave the title Les Contes des fées to her first … Continue reading
On July 1, 1909, Edouard Rahir, the Paris bookseller and bibliographer, visited John Pierpont Morgan, the New York banker and collector, at his London residence … Continue reading
This is no fairy tale but a true story. It is based on archival sources that have lain dormant for centuries and, to my knowledge, … Continue reading
This summer, the Prado Museum in Madrid hosted the exhibition Tesoros de la Hispanic Society of America: Visiones del mundo hispánico. Among the 200 objects … Continue reading
Later this month, the North American Society for Seventeenth-Century French Literature (NASSCFL) will gather in Lyon for its 47th annual conference, devoted to the theme Literature, … Continue reading
Raymond Toinet (1843-1936) was a lawyer from the town of Tulle in central France. In 1880, he was one among several hundred Catholic magistrates who … Continue reading
2016 saw the successful completion of a 40-year project: the publication of the Correspondance of Françoise de Graffigny (1695-1758), famous in her time – and … Continue reading
Many American libraries along the eastern seaboard, from Maine to Washington D.C. and beyond, preserve outstanding autograph collections whose riches remain to be fully explored. … Continue reading
Claude Lefebvre (1632-1675) was his generation’s leading portrait painter, perhaps best known today for the portrait of Jean-Baptiste Colbert that he presented as his reception … Continue reading