Marie-Jeanne Riccoboni

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Marie-Jeanne Riccoboni , b. Laboras de Mézières (born October 25, 1713 in Paris , † December 7, 1792 there ) was a French actress and novelist .

Life

Marie-Jeanne Riccoboni was the daughter of Christoph Nicolas de Heurles du Laboras, a Troyes citizen , and Marie-Marguerite Dujac from Paris. When it was discovered in 1714 that her father was already married to another woman and thus lived in bigamy , he had to return to his first wife in Troyes. Little Marie-Jeanne was considered an illegitimate child and initially remained in the care of her mother, who was, however, not very wealthy and also lacked the mental stability to raise children. So Marie-Jeanne came to a convent and was supposed to become a nun. However, she rebelled against it and her mother had to take her back to her in 1728 when she was 14 years old.

Marie-Jeanne's relationship with her mother was difficult. In a marriage she saw a way to move out of her mother's house and so on July 7th, 1734 she married the six years older Italian-French actor and playwright Antonio Francesco Riccoboni . This was the director of the Théâtre-Italien , where Marie-Jeanne began an acting career in August 1734. But, according to her own confession, she was not particularly gifted for this job. Meanwhile, their marriage was not a happy one. Her husband was extravagant, at times violent, and receptive to other women. In the early years of her marriage, she herself maintained a liaison with Count Yves Marie Desmarets de Maillebois until, in May 1745, he met Marie-Madeleine Catherine de Voyer de Paulmy d'Argenson, a daughter of the diplomat and writer René Louis d'Argenson , married.

In 1755 Marie-Jeanne Riccoboni separated from her husband and moved in with her friend Thérèse Biancolleli, with whom she lived for the rest of her life. Nevertheless, she continued to pay her husband's debts and nursed him in the last stage of his life in 1772.

Riccoboni first tried her hand as a writer in 1751 when she wrote Suite de la vie de Marianne , a continuation of the unfinished novel La Vie de Marianne von Marivaux , imitating Marivaux's style deceptively real. Marivaux had her work published in 1761. With other novels such as Lettres de Mistriss Fanni Butlerd (1757), L'Histoire du marquis de Cressy (1758) and Lettres de Milady Juliette Catesby à Milady Henriette Campley son amie (1759), which, like her other novels, is written in letter form, the author earned enough money to quit her theater career in 1760 and devote herself exclusively to her literary career.

In her novels Riccoboni mostly designed strong female characters who can only love in a sensitive mood, and their conflicts with morally inferior partners who play a calculating double game. The women are not so hurt by their husbands' infidelity as their undermined self-esteem. In her novel Lettres de Milord Rivers à Sir Charles Cardigan (1777), the author tells the relationship between two French women who place their liaison above heterosexual love.

Riccoboni also exchanged letters with various personalities such as Diderot , Laclos , David Hume and David Garrick . Diderot, who in his essay "Paradoxe sur le comédien" exposed her as one of the worst actresses of her time , on the other hand admired her as a writer. She received a small pension from the royal family, until its payment was stopped after the outbreak of the French Revolution in 1789. Marie Antoinette hid her novels in a false cover so that she could devote herself to reading them undisturbed. Riccoboni died impoverished on December 7, 1792 at the age of 79 in Paris. Her complete works came out in Paris in 1818 in six volumes.

Works (selection)

  • Lettres de Mistriss Fanni Butlerd , 1757
  • L'Histoire du marquis de Cressy , 1758
  • Lettres de Milady Juliette Catesby à Milady Henriette Campley son amie , 1759
  • Suite de la vie de Marianne , ed. 1761
  • Les caquets , play, 1761 (with Antonio Francesco Riccoboni)
  • Histoire d'Ernestine , 1762
  • Amélie: sujet tiré de Mr. Fielding , 1762
  • Histoire de Miss Jenny , 1764
  • Lettres d'Adélaïde de Dammartin, comtesse de Sancerre, au comte de Nancé, son ami , 2 vols., 1767
  • Lettres d'Élisabeth Sophie de Vallière à Louise Hortense de Canteleu, son amie , 2 vols., 1772
  • Lettres de Milord Rivers à Sir Charles Cardigan , 2 vol., 1777
  • Histoire des amours de Gertrude, dame de Château-Brillant et de Roger, comte de Montfort , 1780
  • Histoire de deux amies , 1786

literature

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Riccoboni, Marie-Jeanne
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French actress and novelist
DATE OF BIRTH October 25, 1713
PLACE OF BIRTH Paris
DATE OF DEATH December 7, 1792
Place of death Paris