EPINAY, LOUISE-FLORENCE-PETRONILLE TAR DIEU ...

born March 11, 1726, Valenciennes, Fr. died April 17, 1783, Paris byname Madame D'pinay a distinguished figure in advanced literary circles in 18th-century France. Though she wrote a good deal herself, she is more famous for her friendships with three of the outstanding French writers and thinkers of her day, Denis Diderot, Baron Friedrich de Grimm, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Mme d'pinay interested herself in literature and the welfare of men of letters after the breakdown of her marriage to Denis-Joseph de La Live d'pinay, a financier. She set up a congenial salon in her country house at La Chevrette, near Montmorency, and offered hospitality to the Philosophes, the leading intellectual figures of the period immediately prior to the French Revolution. Her friendship with Grimm was long and untroubled, and Mme d'pinay collaborated with him on his famous correspondence. Her association with Rousseau, on the other hand, was brief and stormy: in 1756 he accepted her offer of accommodation in the Hermitage, a small dwelling near her country house, and wrote his novel La Nouvelle Hlose there. But then he quarreled with his hostess, and the two became implacable foes. Mme d'pinay was the author of several novels and works on education, but her writings are of interest now chiefly for their autobiographical revelations.