There are No Letters Like Yours: The Correspondence of Isabelle de Charriere and Constant d'Hermenches (European Women Writers) - Hardcover

Charriere, Isabelle De; D'Hermenches, Constant

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9780803217140: There are No Letters Like Yours: The Correspondence of Isabelle de Charriere and Constant d'Hermenches (European Women Writers)

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0803217145 ISBN 13: 9780803217140

Publisher: University of Nebraska Press, 2000

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Isabelle de Charriere (1740-1805) is best known for four of her novels: "Lettres neuchateloises", "Lettres de Mistriss Henley", "Lettres ecrites de Lausanne", and "Caliste". These representations of provincial courtship, marriage, and domestic life have been called the closest thing A daughter of a distinguished Dutch noble family, she was known in her youth as Belle de Zuylen. At the age of 20 she began a clandestine correspondence with a middle-aged Swiss colonel stationed in Holland. David-Louis, Baron de Constant d'Hermenches, was a friend of Voltaire, an accomplished musician, an amateur writer, and a ladies' man. Their correspondence was one of the finest in a great age of letter-writing. It lasted 15 years, and nearly all of it is extant. Although the two rarely saw each other, their epistolary friendship became one of great depth and scope. Their correspondence touches on a wide range of subjects: James Boswell's courtship of Isabelle, her opinions of English high society, the new smallpox inoculation, and visits by royalty. It includes firsthand accounts of the French conquest of Corsica and of Voltaire's social activism.

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Review:

"Janet Whatley and Macolm Whatley have done a fine job translating this lively correspondence." -- Publisher's Weekly

"Janet Whatley and Malcolm Whatley and the University of Nebraska Press are to be congratulated for bringing this collection of letters to an English-speaking public . . . the Whatleys are well versed in Charriere studies . . . and do an excellent job of placing Belle and Constant in their time. As they claim, Isabelle de Charriere was indeed a remarkable woman and a fine writer, and this collection shows her at the height of her powers." -- The Women's Review of Books, June 2000

"The astonishing letters that Isabelle de Charrihre exchanged as a young woman with a married, rakish military officer are among the most gripping correspondences of the eighteenth century. It is hard to overstate their human and historical interest, and the Whatleys' excellent translation and superb annotation do them justice." -- Joan Hinde Stewart, University of South Carolina

"The translation and publication of this engrossing correspondence between two brilliant temperaments of the Enlightenment is more than an important literary service: it provides revelation and pleasure." -- Shirley Hazzard

"[There Are No Letters Like Yours], elegantly edited and tastefully presented,. is a trifle long for the browsing reader at over 500 pages, but it is a reminder of those elegant days when the whole art of sexuality lay in the philosophical aplomb and resourceful stratagems of one's seductive lover." -- The Spectator, 4 November, 2000

About the Author:

Isabelle de Charriere (1740-1805) is best known for four of her novels: Lettres neuchateloises, Lettres de Mistriss Henley, Lettres ecrites de Lausanne, and Caliste. These finely drawn representations of provincial courtship, marriage, and domestic life have been called the closest thing in French to the novels of Jane Austen. A daughter of a distinguished Dutch noble family, she was known in her youth as Belle de Zuylen. At the age of twenty she began a clandestine correspondence with a middle-aged Swiss colonel stationed in Holland. David-Louis, Baron de Constant d'Hermenches, was a friend of Voltaire, an accomplished musician, an amateur writer, and a ladies' man. Their correspondence was one of the finest in a great age of letter-writing. It lasted fifteen years, and nearly all of it is extant. Although the two rarely saw each other, their epistolary friendship became one of great depth and scope. Their correspondence touches on a wide range of subjects: James Boswell's courtship of Isabelie, her opinions of English high society, the new smallpox inoculation, and visits by royalty. It includes firsthand accounts of the French conquest of Corsica and of Voltaire's social activism. Readers acquainted with Charriere's novels will see in these letters the same finely observed detail, epistolary style, and moral and intellectual awareness. Janet and Malcolm Whatley live in Burlington, Vermont. Janet Whatley is a professor of French at the University of Vermont specializing in the literature of the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries.

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