Le Charme sans la beauté, vie de Sophie Cottin. Par Silvia Lorusso

Abstract

This book provides a long-awaited updated biography of one of the most popular authors of late-eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century France, Sophie Cottin, who between 1799 and 1806 wrote five bestselling novels and a prose poem, but has long been forgotten and overlooked by critics. Yet Silvia Lorusso’s book is among the latest in very recent years to resurrect Cottin’s name and fame. Well researched and comprehensive, it details the short yet eventful life of a woman who ‘a vécu à l’une des périodes les plus troubles de l’histoire de France’ (p. 13). The book begins with Cottin’s early life as the daughter of a manager at the Compagnie des Indes, and then tells of her marriage to Paul Cottin and subsequent widowhood at a young age, her family’s persecution during the Revolution and Terror, her subsequent suitors, the care and attention she gave to her best friend and cousin Julie Verdier and the latter’s children, her decision to write novels, and her incredible success. One of the greatest strengths of Lorusso’s biography is the vast and detailed research which lies behind it. The author has been able to expand upon and, where necessary, correct previous biographies of Cottin, such as Arnelle’s Une oubliée: Mme Cottin d’après sa correspondance (pseud. Mme de Clauzade; Paris: Librairie Plon, Plon-Nourrit et Cie, 1914) and Leslie Sykes’s Madame Cottin (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1949). Lorusso has looked at Cottin’s correspondence more closely than previous biographers, and has been meticulous in both analysis and the calculation of dates. This leads to some significant corrections, providing more accurate details of where Cottin spent her years as an émigrée, and highlighting the fact that the short story, ‘L’Isola Bella’, has previously been falsely attributed to Cottin. Lorusso not only provides information regarding Cottin’s bestselling novels, and the places and situations in which Cottin found herself when writing them, but also provides brief details about Cottin’s unfinished novels and translations. This book complements Marijn S. Kaplin’s critical edition of Cottin’s Malvina (Abingdon: Routledge, 2016), Michael Call’s Infertility and the Novels of Sophie Cottin (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2002), and Brigitte Louichon’s Romancières sentimentales, 1789–1825 (Saint-Denis: Presses universitaires de Vincennes, 2009). It calls our attention to a figure who merits more critical attention than she has received, and is thus a welcome addition to the library of scholars and students investigating the novels and lives of women during late-eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century France. It will be of interest to scholars of the French Revolution, the Terror, the First Republic and First Empire, and to all those who are interested in the effects of these changing political landscapes on daily and family lives.