Madeleine de Scudéry Biography

Dromo's Den

SCUDÉRY, Madeleine de (1607–1701). A French novelist, born at Havre. She was left an orphan at six, was well educated by an uncle, and, with her scapegrace brother Georges, went to Paris in 1630, where her wit and good sense soon won her high rank in the brilliant society of the Hôtel de Rambouillet. Her early writing was done under the name of her brother Georges, who seems to have collaborated with her in battle scenes, general plan, prefaces, and dedications and is said in days of need to have kept his sister under lock to secure steady production. She soon became prominent in society, and her salon was much frequented. Her novels are: Ibrahim (4 vols., 1641); Artamène ou le grand Cyrus (10 vols., 1649–53); Clélie (10 vols., 1654–60); Almahide (1660); Mathilde (1667). For a generation after its publication the Grand Cyrus, which in classic guise depicted French society, was known and studied in all circles that aspired to literary refinement. The longest novel of the world was also the most profitable of the period. The Grand Cyrus is not a story, but a framework for conversation, reflection, analytic portraiture. She painted French aristocracy in the Grand Cyrus and the bourgeoisie of the new culture in Clélie. The characters of her stories were easily recognized as portraits of prominent persons of the day. Her later novels, Spanish and Italian in scene, are insignificant, though regarded as novels they are her best. She tactfully yielded to the literary ideals of the school of 1660, voiced in Boileau's Dialogue des héros, and passed the last 40 years of an honored life with the common esteem of people as different in temper and ideals as Racine and La Fontaine, Condé. and Madame de Sévigné. Her Correspondance is of much literary interest.

The New International Encyclopaedia, Vol. XX (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1920) 627-628.