Marie de Rabutin-Chantal (Marquise de Sévigné)

Marie de Rabutin-Chantal, Marquise de Sévigné (1626–1696), was a French aristocrat renowned for her letter writing. Widowed young, she devoted herself to her children and to Parisian society, moving in literary and courtly circles during the reign of Louis XIV. From 1671 she began an extensive correspondence with her daughter, Françoise-Marguerite de Sévigné, Comtesse de Grignan, after the latter moved to Provence. These letters—lively, observant, and intimate—offer vivid accounts of family life, politics, religion, and manners in seventeenth-century France. Published posthumously, they secured Sévigné’s reputation as a master of French prose and a central figure in epistolary literature.