Madeleine des Roches (1520–1587)

Madeleine Des Roches, née Neveu, was born in Poitiers, France. Around 1539, when she would have been 19 years old, she married André Fradonnet, seigneur Des Roches, a government official. Their daughter Catherine was born in 1542 and taught poetry, literature, and modern and ancient languages by her mother. After being widowed, Madeleine remarried in about 1550 to François Eboissard, lord of La Villée, a lawyer. The two ladies were contemporaries of poet Pierre de Ronsard and friends with the humanist man of letters Etienne Pasquier. Mother and daughter presided over a weekly salon at the center of a literary circle in Poitiers between 1570 and 1587. Madeleine was an educated woman who wrote about how her domestic duties prevented her from devoting herself as much as she would have liked to the activities of the mind. Her works, which included both poetry and prose, insisted on a woman's right to culture and learning. She also translated works from Latin. Madeleine and Catherine (together called Les dames des Roches) published two sets of dialogues, Placide et Sévère (1578) and Iris et Pasithaé.