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INTRODUCTION

The Chawton House Library: Womens Novels series includes several translations
from the French. Like my Translations and Continuations (2011),1 this 1803 translation of Sophie Cottins Malvina (1801) by Elizabeth Gunning offers an example
of an English translation by a woman of a female-authored French novel, and as
such it is also partaking in the relatively recent trend within academia to recuperate from silence the voices of forgotten women writers and trace the networks
among them (ix). Yet, with this being the first nineteenth-century translation in
the series, it speaks more broadly to issues of globalization in the Enlightenment
literary marketplace, womens contributions to it, female networks within it and
the role played by gender in both its process and product. Thus, while Cottin
wrote Malvina in an effort to atone for the proto-feminist overtones of her previous novel, Gunning in fact restored such undercurrents to her translation while
simultaneously striving to defend female virtue more forcefully.
Sophie Cottin (17701807) was born in Bordeaux into the wealthy bourgeois and Protestant Risteau family. Without any brothers and only one older
sister who died in 1785 at age 17, Sophie received a sound education. At age nineteen, she married Paul Cottin, a banker seven years her senior but did not get to
enjoy for very long what appears to have been a loving marriage due to the French
Revolution. In order to escape the revolutionary turmoil, the newlyweds soon fled
to the Pyrenees, Spain and England, but eventually returned to Paris. Paul would
have been arrested there in October 1793, but died just beforehand. Although
a heart attack was blamed for his early demise, suicide has been suggested more
recently.2 Widowed Sophie abandoned the capital and moved to a family country
estate in Champlan accompanied by her cousin Julie, with whom she had a very
close relationship and to whose three daughters she became a substitute mother.
Sophie suffered during the Revolution, lost her fortune and even appeared on
the liste des migrs (list of emigrants) for some time as a Republican traitor. She
turned down several marriage proposals, which in one case provoked a suicide on
her suitors part, but never remarried. In 18045 she came close to remarrying
with Pierre Hyacinthe Azas, a pretentious philosopher, but he rejected her after
she told him she could not bear children.3 Faith always played an important role

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in Cottins life. She was a talented and prolific correspondent4 to friends, family members and Enlightenment luminaries such as Bernardin de Saint-Pierre,
Germaine de Stal and Joseph Lalande and in 1806 she wrote some beautiful
descriptions of Italy during a trip with an ailing relative.5 Several months after her
return, she died very prematurely of breast cancer at age thirty-seven.6
In order to assist a friend in financial need, Cottin published her first novel,
Claire dAlbe, in 1799. Subsequently, four more novels appeared in short succession: Malvina (1801), Amlie Mansfield (1802), Mathilde (1805) and Elisabeth
(1806). Additionally, the best-selling novelist wrote a Bible-inspired text entitled La Prise de Jricho (The Fall of Jericho; 1803). Claire dAlbe (published
anonymously) proved both the most controversial for contemporary audiences
and the most feminist to modern critics, with J. H. Stewart calling the heroines death an attack on the ideology of fatherhood and phallus.7 In short, at age
twenty-two the heroine Claire has been in an arranged marriage8 for seven years
with a respectable man forty years her senior with whom she has two children.
When her husbands nineteen-year-old male relative comes to stay with them,
Claire and he fall in love. The husband separates them, they suffer, but eventually
reunite on the tomb of Claires father (who had arranged the marriage), where
they consummate their relationship. Claire dies the following day. Although the
novel was quite successful, contemporaries criticised its revolting immorality
and later called it one of Cottins most objectionable works.9
Cottins other novels did not create as much of a stir. In Amlie Mansfield, a
young disillusioned widow agrees to move in with an older male relative and become
his heir. Her grandfather had promised his title and wealth to Amlies cousin if he
married her, but she had then eloped. However, the cousin and Amlie meet, fall in
love and agree to marry despite his mothers opposition. They consummate their
relationship, his mother dissuades him from marrying Amlie, Amlie dies and he
follows her. Mathilde, the first novel not to be published anonymously, features the
sixteen-year-old sister of Richard the Lionheart who travels with him to the Holy
Land before becoming a nun. There she meets a Saracen warrior and they fall in love.
Despite her brothers opposition, Mathilde is joined with her just-converted love,
who then dies from battle wounds. Still a virgin, Mathilde enters the convent. Elisabeth, based on a true story, takes place in Siberia where seventeen-year-old Elisabeth
lives with her parents, who are political exiles. During a long voyage undertaken to
ask the tsar for their freedom, she meets a young man and they fall in love. Elisabeth
succeeds in freeing her parents and Cottin hints at a happy ending with her love
interest. This final novel enjoyed a very positive reception.
From the novel titles we can deduce their feminocentricity, a preference
typical of the French nineteenth-century sentimental novel genre to which Cottins work belongs10 and which became popular among women writers after the
Revolution as it allowed them to politicize their male-attributed greater capacity

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for feelings.11 Jean-Jacques Rousseau, whose epistolary novel Julie ou la nouvelle


Hlose (1761) can be considered the earliest example of the genre in France,
exerted a profound influence on Cottin. Rather than following Rousseaus ideals blindly though, Cottin rewrote them, both in her work and in her private
life;12 just like him, she is considered a pre-Romantic.13 Whereas she continued the tradition of Richardson and earlier women writers such as Riccoboni
and Graffigny, Cottin leads readers more commonly from their happy endings
towards thwarted romantic love, death and tragic maternal love (like Julie).
Cottins novels sold very well and were greatly beloved by many contemporaries in France and abroad, including Napoleon. Not everyone shared in this
enthusiasm, however: Madame de Genlis (17461830), for instance, accused
Cottin of having plagiarized her Voeux tmraires (Rash Vows; 1798) in Malvina.14
Later in the nineteenth century, Cottins work became gradually less popular,15
although Victor Hugo called her the most accomplished novelist of her time16
and Marceline Desbordes-Valmore wrote an admiring poem about her.17 Feminist scholars started to recuperate her voice from silence in the late twentieth
century18 and since then, interest in Cottins work has soared although it still
does not rival scholarly interest in her colleagues Riccoboni, Graffigny and Charrire. In 1996 Raymond Trousson published a modern French edition of Claire
dAlbe in Europe, which facilitated easier access for modern readers; in 2002 the
American Modern Language Association published the novel in both French and
English. Several doctoral dissertations devoted to the author have also appeared,
thus consolidating the future of Cottin scholarship on both continents.
From Cottins correspondence published by Sykes we know that a first draft
of Malvina was ready as early as 7 January 1799,19 but that the author did not
sell her manuscript to Maradan for 1,200 livres until 5 September 1800.20 Then,
in a letter from the publisher to Cottin dated 7 January 1801 he states that the
novel is not ready yet but will be soon; it did indeed appear later that month.21
French reviews of Malvina, although not extremely negative, expressed some
criticism. Thus the Mercure de France claimed that Malvinas topic was not new even
though Cottin had added some new elements (p. 331) and reproached the novel for
having a little affectation and much ambition (p. 333). Nevertheless, from Cottins
correspondence we know that Malvina sold so well that a mere five months later by 5
June 1801, Maradan had already prepared a second edition without changes or corrections.22 In 1805 there followed a second revised and corrected edition published in
Paris by Michaud that contained some important changes (see Volume II, note 29 of
this edition). That was the last edition during Cottins lifetime; numerous posthumous
editions appeared by Michaud and other publishers. No modern edition exists.23
In Cottins own words, Malvina is somewhat the correction of [Claire
dAlbe] because her belief that she could remain anonymous had caused her to
paint somewhat voluptuous colours, somewhat intense passions. Since she had

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been recognized as the author and already suffered a great deal because of it, she
no longer wants to deprive herself of the most amusing activity she has found
yet and is therefore writing another novel.24 The Notice to Malvinas first edition25 clarifies that it is not the epistolary novel she announced in Claire because
she finds the chapter format easier; thus, Malvina has an omniscient narrator
and several inserted letters. It also became unintentionally longer than Claire.
In addition to format and length which gives Malvina numerous side plots
with various secondary yet important characters, such as Mr Prior, a Catholic priest
who is Sir Edmonds rival, and Malvinas friend Mrs St Clare and her sister Louisa
other differences set it apart from Claire. At its core lies the conflict between passionate love and motherly (substitute) love. The title character widowed young
after an unhappy marriage in France moves to England to join her childhood
friend Clara who has married there. When Clara dies young, Malvina promises
to look after her five-year-old daughter Frances at the exclusion of all other emotional ties. Nevertheless, she breaks that vow when, having moved to Scotland to
live with a female relative named Mrs Burton, she falls in love with and agrees to
marry Mrs Burtons libertine nephew, Sir Edmond. His subsequent infidelity literally kills her, leaving him mourning at her tomb. The correction Cottin wished
to make in comparison with Claire likely refers to issues related to its revolting
immorality: Malvina gives herself to Edmond after their marriage, and not while
married to someone else like Claire; the chapter entitled Conjugal Happiness
does not divulge details of physical intimacy between the newlyweds, and Cottin
purposely refuses to mention pleasures that my pen will not risk describing (see
Volume IV, note 27 of this edition), which contrasts sharply with the expressions
of female desire and sexual pleasure present in Claire (2002, p. 148).
Although an entire chapter is devoted to a portrait of Malvina (Volume I,
chapter II), Cottin gives not so much a physical description of her as a moral
one: as there were few women who surpassed her in beauty, there was not one
who possessed superior virtue.26 Virtue recurs frequently in Malvina. For the
heroine it consists in fulfilling her vow to Clara of being a substitute mother to
Fanny, and avoiding the fault of choosing passionate love over maternal love.
Once she commits that fault and abandons virtue, Malvina is depicted as suffering from Claras death and the cruelty of others, such as Sir Edmond who betrays
their marriage vows, Kitty Fenwick who assists him in doing so and Mrs Burton
who takes away Fanny. This confirms April Allistons argument that

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The virtue of eighteenth-century heroines does not consist, like manly virtue, in
the performance of good deeds or serviceable actions, but rather in the avoidance of
fault. Now, the avoidance of fault entails the avoidance of anything resembling a deed
Hence the classical virtue of agency comes to be replaced by a feminine virtue of
suffering, both in the current sense and in the earlier one of passivity, or suffering
the action of others. That suffering in turn not only justifies but demands the readers
sympathetic interest. Thus heroines are interesting when they are victims27

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Modern readers raised with the tenets of feminism, however, may find such heroines interesting primarily as reflecting the gender politics of their times.
Gender and its politics figure prominently in Malvina. Substitute motherhood and female friendship, both of which played a crucial role in Cottins own
life, lend essential meaning to Malvinas existence. Her lifelong friendship with
Clara helps both women negotiate patriarchy, marriage and (substitute) motherhood.28 Malvina subsequently experiences the power of female friendship again
with Mrs St Clare a woman bearing the same name and writing novels to earn
a living in order to pay for her sister who has been seduced and impregnated
by Sir Edmond. Mrs St Clares cautionary tale about Sir Edmond does not deter
Malvina from marrying him however an instance where female friendship does
not succeed in combatting patriarchy and male prerogative. Malvina believes her
love will cure Sir Edmond of his libertinism and pays for this mistake with her
life. Mrs St Clare embodies additional commentary by Cottin on gender. Volume
II, chapter VI, entitled Preface and omitted from the second (Michaud) edition
onwards, presents and then criticizes Mrs St Clare for being a female novelist.
Malvina condemns novel-writing as a useless occupation for women who should
not enter the public sphere once they become wives and mothers29 whereas Mrs
St Clare defends herself by saying that women can more particularly understand
and delineate all the characteristics of sentiment, which is in some degree the
history of their lives.30 The resulting conflict between femininity versus fame
represents a major paradox in Cottins own life.31 The author also demonstrates
gender consciousness in differentiating between readers of both sexes. When
Kitty Fenwick sets out to seduce Sir Edmond (again) in Volume IV, chapter VI
after his marriage to Malvina, Cottin refuses to indicate whether Kitty succeeds
fearing that men would not believe her failure while women would detest her
success. In order not to displease readers of either sex, Cottin leaves the question
unanswered yet admits that as a woman, she is happy believing, that he resisted
the seducing arts of Mrs Fenwick, and remained faithful to Malvina.
Cottin enjoyed reading and music. She was a singer, composer and musician,
playing the piano, harp and harmonica.32 Not surprisingly then, Malvina includes
numerous literary and musical references in addition to the biblical ones inspired
by Cottins Protestant faith. The novels protagonist owes her name to Scottish
poet James Macphersons character Ossian.33 Because of their shared interest in
Ossian, Mr Prior teaches Malvina the Erse language so she might read the original
text, and then falls in love with her. Additional literary references to both French
and foreign poetry, and fiction from various centuries come from Dryden, Shakespeare, Rowe, Chamfort, Addison, Richardson, Sterne, Montaigne, Rousseau and
Riccoboni, among others. Cottin also read her female colleagues Charrire, Stal,
Ducos and Genlis. Music matters in the novel both in the love plot and in Malvinas final therapy; Cottin demonstrates her knowledge of music history as well as

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of various operas. Art is also discussed, particularly paintings of the Italian and
French skies that Mrs Burton prefers to the real, forbidding Scottish skies.
The description of Mrs Burtons castle in Scotland34 as having Gothic grandeur that was increased by the lofty mountains covered with snow, which
towered above it (p. 6) links Malvina to the tradition of Gothic fiction a category of Romantic literature in the vein of Horace Walpoles Castle of Otranto
(1765) and Ann Radcliffes oeuvre, later followed by Frankenstein (1818), for
instance. Initially inspired by medieval buildings and ruins, the genre focuses
on death, darkness and decay. Gothic fiction is usually set in old (haunted) castles that often correspond to haunted minds and its themes may include masks,
isolation, madness, ghosts, the church and clergy, disease and eroticism. While
Mrs Burtons castle provides the classic Gothic setting,35 various other motifs
enhance Malvinas ties to the genre. Thus, Mrs St Clares pregnant sister Louisa
is imprisoned in a tower by her husband, Malvina falls victim to madness, Sir
Edmond suffers from a lengthy and nearly fatal disease during which Malvina
cares for him wearing the mask of a nurse, Sir Edmonds libertine impulses provoke his promiscuity, Mr Prior as a clergyman in love represents religions decay,
and the novel begins and ends with a tomb to mention but a few.
The translator of Malvina, Elizabeth Gunning (17691823), comes from a
literary family background. She was the only child of Susannah Minifie Gunning,
who wrote several novels36 some of them in collaboration with her sister Margaret both before her marriage and after her separation from Elizabeths father,
John Gunning, a general who distinguished himself during the Battle of Bunker
Hill in 1775. On her fathers side, Elizabeth also had the novelist Lady Charlotte
Bury as a younger cousin. Elizabeth grew up in Edinburgh without her father while
he was fighting in the war in America. Nothing is known about her education, but
given that she was an only child with a novelist mother who was not writing at the
time, her mother likely became involved in her education at home. Her mother
belonged to the English gentry, and her father, whose sisters the beautiful Gunning sisters married into the nobility, belonged to the Irish gentry.
In 17901, Elizabeth found herself at the centre of a scandal that Horace
Walpole nicknamed the Gunninghiad and that divided her family permanently.
Exact details of the story remain elusive, but in late 1790 Elizabeth announced her
engagement to the marquis of Blandford, heir to the duke of Marlborough and a
brilliant prospect. When no wedding date had been set several months later, her
father inquired with the duke of Marlborough. The latters reply, as well as letters
from the marquis himself, were found to be forgeries and the engagement fake.
Elizabeths father and contemporary public opinion accused her and her mother
of being the forgers, but given his own financial problems, modern scholars consider him just as likely a culprit. Elizabeth and her mother became estranged from
him over this, and they moved away. Later rumours implied Elizabeth actually

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loved the marquis of Lorn and had tried to produce a rival for her affections so he
would propose to her. The matter, complete with further public accusations and
defence letters, including those by Elizabeths mother who always remained on
her side and by a relative of her fathers who was involved, became media fodder
and Elizabeth fell victim to intense public debates, pamphlets and caricatures.37
Her father was later sued by his mistresss husband and left the country immediately and permanently perhaps also afraid of forgery charges. He died abroad
in 1797, but did leave his wife and daughter an inheritance. While Elizabeth and
her mother travelled in France, they met Irish Major James Plunkett, who had fled
there in order to avoid the death sentence he had received for his role in the 1798
Irish Rebellion. Elizabeth married him in 1803 after her mother died in 1800.
A few years after the scandal, Elizabeth became a very prolific novelist and
translator, producing eleven novels, five translations from the French and three
books of childrens stories over the course of her career. Due to her Irish family
ties and her early novels also appearing in Dublin, she is occasionally considered
an Irish author, but she did not live in Ireland for any extended period. Her first
novel, The Packet (1794), refers to the scandal in both preface and plot and was
well received.38 After her mother died, Elizabeth found an unfinished novel by
her, which she completed and published in 1802 as The Heir Apparent. Her
novels have been described as sentimental, with heavy-footed humour, trite
moralizing, a self-consciously elaborate style, and intense class-consciousness.39
Among her translations from the French, Conversations on the Plurality of Worlds
stands out in that its topic comes from the domain of science. However, framed
by an introduction from the male astronomer Lalande and by Fontenelles own
preface, Elizabeths translation in a version of the book edited by Lalande does
not make her a scientist, revealing her presence merely in a little learned footnoting and qualifying her rather as a facilitator in scientific knowledge exchange.40
The majority of Elizabeths oeuvre appeared before her marriage, four works
(three of them translations, including Malvina) came out in the year of her
marriage (1803) and the remainder later during her marriage. A publication
gap exists spanning 1804 through early 1808, which likely corresponds to the
period when Elizabeth had (some of her) children being newly married and in
her mid- to late-thirties. It is agreed that she had a large family, but the details
remain unclear; one very detailed source suggests five children may have been
born three sons and twin daughters.41
After a severe illness, Elizabeth died at Melford House in Long Melford, Suffolk, on 20 July 1823, aged fifty-four.42In her obituary, Gentlemans Magazine
called her a lady endowed with many virtues, and considerable accomplishments.43
Modern scholars have been studying the international networks among Enlightenment women writers, readers and translators in order to identify and classify
their contributions to the transmission of ideas and the globalization of the literary

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marketplace.44 Malvina offers another illustration of the importance of such a transnational approach. Although Gunning visited France and Cottin visited England,
no record exists of their meeting or correspondence. Nevertheless, this translation
creates a link between them that highlights specifically the importance of gender in
such networks particularly in female-authored novels translated by women.
Gunnings first translation of a (male-authored) French text, Memoirs of Madame de Barneveldt, appeared in 1795. In its Advertisement Gunning states that she
flatters herself that the trifling alterations she has thought it necessary to make from
the original work having nothing to do with the historical, characteristical, political, or
critical parts of it, will meet with indulgence, particularly from her own sex, who certainly cannot be displeased that female delicacy should be preserved in all its purity45

This brief declaration exposes the complex relationships at play between translator, reader, gender and text, demonstrating Gunnings awareness of, and
sensitivity to, contemporary gender issues as they relate to her translations.
Superficially, Gunnings Malvina conforms quite closely to the French original.
The translator made numerous minor changes but very few major ones, such as
altering Malvinas age from twenty-one to twenty-five, implying different English
standards for women living alone. She omitted some verse recitals, songs and many
French footnotes ranging from Cottin defending textual choices she had made (for
Malvinas portrait, Mr Priors language) and the sources of quotations (literary, biblical) to features of Scotland more familiar to English than French readers (religion,
belief in magic). Given its length, Gunning made very few mistakes (grammar,
syntax, vocabulary) in the translation; she effected some minor corrections to the
French (see, for instance, Volume I, chapter I and Volume II, chapter XII). However,
on the surface the French and English texts resemble each other closely.
In terms of gender though, Gunnings Malvina includes important changes
as female delicacy reasserts its central role in ironically her first translation
of a womans text. While Cottin had wanted to scale back Claire dAlbes voluptuous colours and intense passions in Malvina, Gunning reduces them further
still. She deletes passionate expressions such as [Malvinas] breast agitated by
the same passion burning in his (Volume II, chapter XV) and transported by
her beauty and avid for pleasure (Volume IV, chapter III), comments on the
power of love (particularly Malvinas love for the libertine Sir Edmond), on the
impossibility of resisting love and on conjugal happiness (Volume IV, chapter
III). Undoubtedly so that female delicacy should be preserved in all its purity,
the extensive details of Kittys seduction of married Sir Edmond and her being
half nude and in a state of the most voluptuous abandon (Volume IV, chapter VIII) are equally missing from the translation. Cottin herself seems to have
become ever more sensitized to these issues, because starting with the second
(Michaud) edition she omits the seduction details from the French original.

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In further gender-related changes, Gunning presents women writers in a more


favourable light than Cottin. In the Preface chapter on women writers (Volume
II, chapter VI) also later omitted she translates Mrs St Clare as not knowing any woman writer to have attained success in a genre other than sentimental
fiction. Cottin, however, had added a lengthy footnote elaborating and claiming
no woman had written a philosophical work, a play, or indeed one of those large
productions that demand long and thoughtful reflection and that could be ranked
with those of our second-rate male writers. She attributes this to Nature equipping
womens hearts and mens minds better all of which Gunning omits. Additionally, Gunning does not extend the absence of genius to all women, like Cottin, but
only to certain women, and blames womens lack of education for it, unlike Cottin. They both wonder whether women should write at all if it is merely to display
their inadequacy (Cottin) or to display their talents (Gunning). Gunnings more
positive and Cottins conflicted opinions about women writers might be attributed in part to the formers literary family history and the latters influence from
Rousseau; once more, the translation already anticipates the second (Michaud)
French edition in its revised, less harsh criticism of women writers.
Cottin and Gunnings differing opinions on women writers appear to extend
to their entire sex. When Malvina attends a ball trying to forget Sir Edmond,
Gunning translates that she is above trying to make Sir Edmond jealous by paying attention to another man, but omits Cottins sexist comment that [Malvina]
is a woman and that word restores all my doubts (Volume II, chapter VIII).
They also regard motherhood differently: while Cottin, a substitute mother herself, calls Malvina Fannys mother when Mrs Burton takes her away (Volume IV,
chapter X), Gunning, who had not given birth yet when she translated Malvina,
describes her as [Fannys] more than mother implying that for her, Malvina as a
substitute mother had gone above and beyond the call of motherhood.
Men also receive different treatment from Cottin and Gunning. Gunning
depicts men less negatively overall, perhaps in an effort to please her male readers
or not frighten the female ones as much. Whereas Cottin identifies with women
by saying our sex when discussing how feeling sincere affection prevents women
from straying unlike men, Gunnings translation states merely women in general, excluding herself in the first person and thus not antagonizing male readers
as directly (Volume IV, chapter VI). Also, whereas Cottin claims in the Preface
chapter that love does not matter as much in mens lives as in womens lives,
Gunning does not concur and states that men merely have more trouble writing
about the topic. And when Gunning refers to the inconstancy of man, she omits
Cottins elaboration on the subject and her condemnation of Sir Edmonds
inconstancy in Volume IV, chapter VI, as well as her footnote listing unfaithful male protagonists in literature. This list is followed by etc. etc. etc. etc. to
indicate their prevalence, but all etc.s are again deleted from the second

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(Michaud) edition onwards. Instead, Gunning creates a new paragraph explaining why Sir Edmond, lacking humility, was seduced a second time by Kitty.
Cottins Malvina in translation by Gunning exemplifies how French and
British women contributed to the globalization of the early nineteenth-century
literary marketplace, disseminating French cultural capital to Britain. Although
a female-authored text, the most significant changes Malvina underwent in
translation are in fact gender-related: Gunning portrays women, women writers
and men more positively than Cottin, while simultaneously aiming to protect
female delicacy more vigorously by reducing or eliminating expressions and
scenes of passion and (extramarital) seduction. Ironically, Cottin had set a
similar goal for herself in writing Malvina, and she implemented several of Gunnings changes in her own later edition.
Notes
1.

It contains Frances Brookes 1760 translation of Marie Jeanne Riccobonis Lettres de Juliette Catesby (Letters from Juliette Catesby) and Miss Robertss 1774 The Peruvian Letters,
a translation of Franoise de Graffignys Lettres dune Pruvienne (Letters from a Peruvian
Woman) as well as a continuation, followed by Robertss own continuation.
2. See C. Cazenobe, Une prromantique mconnue: Madame Cottin, Travaux de littrature, 1 (1988), pp. 175202, on p. 177.
3. Infertility is the theme of one of the rare modern full-length critical studies of Cottins
oeuvre by M. J. Call: Infertility and the Novels of Sophie Cottin (2002).
4. See the Correspondence section in the Bibliography. Articles by Roulston (Gendering the Self in Eighteenth-Century Womens Letters) and Cusset (Ceci nest point
une lettre: change pistolaire et mystique de la transparence. Le cas de Sophie Cottin
(17701807)) examine Cottins correspondence specifically.
5. For a correspondence-based study of this journey, see my article Femininity, Fame, Faith
and Philosophy: Sophie Cottins 1806 Voyage to Italy.
6. L. C. Sykes provides detailed biographical information see: Madame Cottin (Oxford:
Basil Blackwell, 1949). S. Spencers 2005 article (Sophie Cottin) presents the most recent biography and bibliography.
7. Gynographs: French Novels by Women of the Late Eighteenth Century (Lincoln, NE and
London: University of Nebraska Press, 1993), p. 186.
8. See R. P. Thomas Arranged Marriages and Marriage Arrangements in Eighteenth-Century French Novels by Women (Women in French Studies, 14 (2006), pp. 3749) for an
analysis of this arranged marriage.
9. Stewart, Gynographs, pp. 1725.
10. See M. Cohen, The Sentimental Education of the Novel (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999), p. 47. On the genre, also see B. Louichon, Romancires sentimentales
(Paris: Presses Universitaires de Vincennes, 2009).
11. See C. Hesse, The Other Enlightenment: How French Women Became Modern (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001), pp. 1425.
12. See my article (Femininity, Fame, Faith and Philosophy) and C. Cusset (Rousseaus
Legacy: Glory and Femininity at the End of the Eighteenth Century: Sophie Cottin and
Elisabeth Vige-Lebrun). R. Trousson presents Claire dAlbe as a rewriting of Rousseaus
Julie (Sophie Cottin disciple indocile de Jean-Jacques Rousseau); S. Spencer ascribes to

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13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
18.
19.
20.
21.
22.
23.
24.
25.
26.
27.
28.
29.
30.
31.
32.
33.
34.
35.
36.
37.

38.
39.

40.

41.

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the former a more audacious female morality (Reading in Pairs: La Nouvelle Hlose
and Claire dAlbe, Romance Languages Annual, 7 (1995), pp. 16672, on p. 170).
By Cazenobe (Une prromantique mconnue: Madame Cottin) and Bertrand-Jennings
(Un autre mal du sicle: le romantisme des romancires, 18001846), among others.
Sykes, Madame Cottin, pp. 2248.
Elisabeth and its reception in the United States into the twentieth century form an exception (See Spencer Sophie Cottin, pp. 11314).
Sykes, Madame Cottin, p. 256.
Sykes, Madame Cottin, p. 258.
Cazenobe and Trousson in Europe, and Stewart and Spencer in the United States, for
instance.
Sykes, Madame Cottin, p. 322.
Sykes, Madame Cottin, pp. 399400.
Sykes, Madame Cottin, pp. 44, 401.
Sykes, Madame Cottin, p. 401.
H. Krief s Vivre libre et crire contains some excerpts of Malvina, as well as a useful introduction about female novelists during the Revolution.
Sykes, Madame Cottin, p. 330.
Reproduced in the editorial notes (Volume I, note 3) to Malvina.
We note here that although Cottin describes Malvina twice as having cheveux blonds
(blond hair), Gunning gives her light brown and auburn hair, respectively.
A. Alliston, Virtues Faults: Correspondences in Eighteenth-Century British and French
Womens Fiction (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1996), p. 86.
See J. Todds study on the role of womens friendship in literature: Womens Friendship in
Literature (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 1980).
This criticism includes women composers see Volume II, note 29.
On the different implications of this for men and women, see Cohen, The Sentimental
Education of the Novel, p. 47.
See the section by that name in my article Femininity, Fame, Faith and Philosophy for
a summary of various critics analyses.
Sykes, Madame Cottin, p. 20.
See Volume I, note 32 for details.
On the role of Scotland in Malvina, see P. Pelckmans, Lcosse des romancires.
See the article by R. Craig on how Cottin uses the castle as Gothic and libertine spaces
in her sentimental novel to create an early Romantic hybrid.
They are described as exceedingly harmless; an absence of plot forming their most original characteristic (Dictionary of National Biography, vol. 23, p. 349).
See the articles by P. Perkins (The Fictional Identities of Elizabeth Gunning) and T.
Beebee (Publicity, Privacy, and the Power of Fiction in the Gunning Letters) for more
background on the scandal.
Perkins considers it an effort to redeem the authors image in the public eye.
I. Grundy, Gunning, Elizabeth (17691823), in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), at http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/
article/11745 [accessed 21 July 2014].
A. E. Martin No Tincture of Learning? Aphra Behn as (Re)Writer and Translator, UCL
Translation in History Lectures (24 October 2013), at http://www.ucl.ac.uk/translationstudies/translation-in-history/documents/Martin-Aphra-Behn-pdf [accessed 21 July 2014].
Notes and Queries, 6th series, vol. 4 (30 July 1881), p. 89.

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42. Orlando: Womens Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present offers
detailed biographical and bibliographical information (eds S. Brown, P. Clements and
I. Grundy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Online, 2006), at http://orlando.
cambridge.org/ [accessed March 25 2014]).
43. Gentlemans Magazine, and Historical Chronicle, vol. 93, part 2 (August 1823), p. 190.
44. See for instance S. van Dijk (ed.), WomenWriters, at http://neww.huygens.knaw.nl/ [accessed 23 March 2015] and the volumes that G. Dow co-edited: Women Readers in Europe: Readers, Writers, Salonnires, 17501900, special issue of Womens Writing, 18:1
(February 2011).
45. E. Gunning Plunkett, Memoirs of Madame de Barneveldt, Translated from the French
(London: Low; Booker, 1795).

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