DESBORDES-VALMORE, MARCELINE

born June 30, 1786, Douai, Fr. died July 23, 1859, Paris French poet and woman of letters of the Romantic period. Her family was ruined by the French Revolution and moved to the French colony of Guadeloupe. She returned to Paris upon her mother's death, supporting herself by acting at the Opra-Comique and the Odon. She married a second-rate actor, Prosper Lanchantin, called Valmore. When illness threatened her stage voice, Desbordes-Valmore turned to writing. Her poetryPauvres Fleurs (1839; Poor Flowers), Les Pleurs (1833; The Tears), and Bouquets et prires (1843; Bouquets and Prayers)is poignant and elegiac and concerns religion, sadness, death, and the author's love for her daughters and her native Douai. Her prose work L'Atelier d'un peintre (1833; A Painter's Studio) is autobiographical. The poet Charles Baudelaire esteemed her writing, and Paul Verlaine admitted his debt to her, giving her a place in his revised edition of Les Potes maudits (1888; The Damned [or Maligned] Poets).