Fairy Tales Framed: Early Forewords, Afterwords, and Critical Words

17. Marie-Jeanne Lhéritier de Villandon, Diverse Works1 (1696)

127 17 Marie-Jeanne Lhéritier de Villandon, Diverse Works1 (1696) Marie-Jeanne Lhéritier de Villandon was born in Paris in 1664, daughter of the erudite royal historian Nicolas Lhéritier, who fostered his daughter’s education in literature and history. Welcomed into the highest social circles with her education and her ancient aristocratic lineage, but with only modest financial means at her disposal, Mlle Lhéritier required financial support for her literary life. This was supplied first by Marie d’Orléans Longueville, Duchess of Nemours, and after her death by the chancellor of France, Germain Louis Chauvelin, who granted her a lifetime pension. Mlle Lhéritier was a woman of letters in an era of many distinguished women writers; she edited the memoire of the Duchess de Nemours and published numerous miscellanies and story collections, whose contents she called variously “whims,” “prose works,” “novelties,” “short stories,” or “works of gallantry” (caprices, ouvrages en prose, nouvelles, pièces galantes). Well respected by French contemporaries, Mlle Lhéritier was inducted into a Toulouse literary academy, the Academy of Jeux Floraux, in 1696, as well as into the Padua Academy of Ricovrati in 1697. Addressing the Duchess of Epernon in “The Enchantments of Eloquence ,” Mlle Lhéritier identified herself as a historian and wrote that her tales had originally been produced by the troubadours of medieval Provence (see p. 135). She was thus the first to claim an ancient oral origin for tales, although she had manifestly derived some of them from Les Facetieuses Nuictz. This French translation of Straparola’s tale collection had been printed in 1. Œuvres meslées contenant l’innocente tromperie, L’avare puny. Les enchantemens de l’Eloquence. Les avantures de Finette. Nouvelles et autres ouvrages en vers et en prose. De Madelle L’H***. Avec Le triomphe de Madame Des-Houlieres, Tel qu’il été composé par Melle L’H*** A PARIS au Palais, Chez Jean Guignard, à l’entrèe de la Grand’Salle, à l’Image saint Jean. M. DC. LXXXXVI. Avec Privilege du Roy. 128 / Fairy Tales Framed France sixteen times between the late 1500s and the early 1600s, as Mme de Murat pointedly noted in 1699 in the Avertissement for her Sublime and Allegorical Histories, further mentioning that it had been used by several French fairy-tale authors (see p. 204). The immediate source for some of her other tales lay in Basile’s Pentamerone (see p. 137n7). At her death, both leading literary journals of the day, Le Journal des sçavans and Le Mercure galant, commemorated her work with effusive praise. In the late 1600s, a completed manuscript routinely moved swiftly to publication. Thus the date on which Pierre Auboüin (also spelled Auboyn) granted a copyright (privilège) for Mlle Lhéritier’s Diverse Works, 19 June 1695, justifies a general conclusion about the likely date of its composition. If Monsieur Auboyn let a few weeks pass before granting copyright, a safe assumption for any bureaucratic function, one may reasonably posit a date of submission for the manuscript around the beginning of June, with composition of the tales in Diverse Works probably having taken place in the preceding months, that is, in the spring of 1695. A second firm date, the book’s registration, falls two months later on 18 August 1695. The third reliable date appeared in the book’s colophon, a date inserted when a book had been printed and was ready for the market. This was 8 October 1695.2 The book’s title page presented its long title as follows: Œuvres meslées, contenant L’Innocente tromperie, L’Avare puny, Les Enchantemens de l’eloquence, Les Avantures de Finette, Nouvelles, et autres ouvrages en vers et en prose, de Madelle L’H*** avec Le triomphe de Madame Des-Houlieres, Tel qu’il a été composé par Madelle L’H***3 (Diverse Works, containing The Innocent Deceit, The Miser Punished, The Enchantments of Eloquence, The Adventures of Finette, Novellas, and other works in verse and in prose by Mademoiselle L’H ***, including The Triumph of Madame Deshoulieres, Which was Composed by Mademoiselle L’H***), as well as its place of publication (A Paris, Chez Jean Guignard, à l’entrée de la Grand’Salle, à l’Image saint Jean [In Paris, By Jean Guignard at the entrance of the Great Salon, by the statue of Saint John]), the date of its official publication (1696), and the notice of its privilege. 2. Raymonde Robert noted in...