Madame de Graffigny
By: Jules Hamilton

Better known as Madame de Graffigny, Françoise d'Issembourg du Buisson d'Happoncourt was the author of Lettres d'une Péruvienne, which is directly translated to Letters from a Peruvian Woman. However, the edition printed in 1771 is titled Letters Written by a Peruvian Princess. This epistolary novel first made de Graffigny famous as a writer, but she became the most well known female writer after the creation of her comedy Cénie. 

Françoise was born on the 11th of February in 1695 in the duchy of Lorraine, to François d'Happoncourt, a cavalry officer, and Marguerite Callot. Her father was a squire, which was the lowest rank of nobility in eighteenth century France. She was married to François Huguet in 1712, before she was seventeen years old. Though her husband was a squire, like her father, he inherited the Graffigny estate upon their marriage, so the couple took the name “de Graffigny.” The marriage was not the happiest, as the couple produced no children surviving beyond the age of three, and Huguet was eventually imprisoned for domestic violence. Being a drunk and a gambler, he left Françoise in debt and despair upon his death in 1725. 

Both of her parents died just a few years later, so by 1733, she was free of all familial ties. She lived in Lorraine until 1737, with the support of the Duchess of Lorraine, before the Duchess’s son ceded Lorraine to France before his marriage. This left de Graffigny bankrupt and desolate, with nowhere to go. She made arrangements to live with the Duchess de Richelieu, formerly a Lorraine, in 1739. In the meantime, she stayed at Cirey, where Voltaire was living with his lover. Interestingly, while on the way to Cirey, Françoise briefly stayed with the mother of the future duc de Choiseul, a controversial figure in 1771 due to his involvement in the Falkland Islands dispute. She moved around a little bit more until finally living independently in Paris in 1742. 

De Graffigny began to spend time with many writers in the area, and it was when she found herself even deeper in debt in 1746, that she began to pursue her ambition to become a published writer. For years, she had been in the process of creating several works, though they were never published. In late 1747, she published Letters Written by a Peruvian Princess, which was wildly successful, with fourteen editions, including three English translations by the end of 1748. Over the next hundred years, 140 editions were published. 

Her financial situation improved tremendously, which allowed her to attend her aforementioned comedy Cénie. Her success made her a popular hostess, gathering with many renowned writers of the time including Diderot, Montesquieu, Rousseau, and Voltaire. Since her death in 1758, her correspondence with her long time friend, François-Antoine Devaux, has been collected and published, and it is said to be one of her most important works, as it offers a unique point of view of a woman’s life in eighteenth-century France.