Marquise de Lambert (1647–1733)

Anne-Thérèse Marguenat de Courcelles was born in Paris to a wealthy aristocratic family from the region of Troyes. Her father died in 1650, when she was a small child, and her mother Monique Passart remarried to François Le Coigneux, seigneur de la Roche Turpin et de Bachaumont, a poet. She attended a convent boarding school, but her stepfather encouraged her love of literature and guided her to study the classics. In 1666, at age 16, she was married to Henri de Lambert, marquis de Saint-Bris, and is known to history as the marquise de Lambert or Madame de Lambert. The couple had two children before her husband died suddenly in 1686. She rented half of the Hôtel de Nevers in Paris and launched a preeminent salon of writers and philosophers that became known as "the antechamber of the Académie Française" and the "bureau d’esprit" (business office of wit). Her early works were moral instructions to her children as they entered adulthood. Later writings were concerned with friendship, old age, gender issues, aesthetics, and social criticism. They were originally written for private circulation among the members of her family and salon, as publishing a book for public sale was not considered appropriate for a lady of the period. However, pirated editions of her works appeared during her lifetime and sold briskly, leading to translations into English. They included Counsels of a Mother to her Son (1726); New Reflections on Women (1727), which advocated higher education for women; and Counsels of a Mother to Her Editor (1728). Her collected works went through numerous editions throughout the 18th century.