Louise Levesque, née Cavelier, (23 November 1703, Rouen – 18 May 1745, Paris) was an 18th-century French
femme de lettres
The academic discipline of women's writing is a discrete area of literary studies which is based on the notion that the experience of women, historically, has been shaped by their sex, and so women writers by definition are a group worthy of separ ...
.
The daughter of a prosecutor at the
parlement de Normandie, Louise Cavelier received a good education. At age 20, she married Levesque, a gendarme of the King whom she followed to Paris. Introduced to distinguished writers, these men of letters, of which she made her favorite company and who appreciated the scope of her mind, induced her to write. She therefore devoted her leisure reading and soon indulged herself to poetry. She tried her hand to most varied genres.
Works
*1731: ''Lettres et chansons de Céphise et d’Uranie'', Paris, in-8° ;
*1733: ''Célénie'', histoire allégorique, Paris, 4 part. in-12 ;
*1736: ''Le Minet'', pièce comique et facétieuse, Paris, in-12 ;
*1736: ''Lélia, ou Histoire de Carthage'', Amsterdam, in-12 ;
*1736: ''Judith'', five-act opera, Paris, non performed because no composer accepted to write the music.
* ''Remarques critiques sur l’histoire de Don Quichotte'' ;
* ''L’Augustin'', pièce grave et plusieurs pièces de vers dans les ''Amusements du cœur et de l’esprit'' ;
*1736–1741: ''Le Siècle, ou les mémoires du Comte de Solinville'', moral novel, La Haye, in-12 ;
*1738: ''Sancho Pança, gouverneur'', poème burlesque, Amsterdam, in-8° ;
*1740: ''L’Auteur fortuné'', comedy, Paris ;
*1744: ''Le Prince des Aigues-Marines. Le Prince Invisible'', contes, Paris, in-12 ;
Sources
* Gabriel Lhéry, « Notice sur Louise Cavelier Levesque », ''Poètes normands'', Éd.
Louis-Henri Baratte Louis-Henri Baratte (born 20 April 1805) was a French scholar from Criquetot-l'Esneval, Normandy.
Biography
A doctor of medicine, Baratte undertook to publish a collection of portraits of the famous Normans composed of at least two thousand por ...
, Paris, Amédée Bedelet, Martinon, Dutertre et Pilout, 1846.
*
Pierre Larousse, ''Grand Dictionnaire universel du XIXe'', vol. 10, Paris, Administration du grand Dictionnaire universel, (p. 445).
* Lévesque (Louise Cavelier, dame), in ''Biographie Universelle, Ancienne et Moderne... '', vol. 24, Paris, 1819; copied in
Théodore-Éloi Lebreton
Théodore-Éloi Lebreton (1 December 1803 – 12 December 1883) was a 19th-century autodidact French poet, chansonnier and bibliographer.
Biography
Born from a day laborer and a washerwoman, Lebreton entered at age seven in an indienne factor ...
'
''Biographie Normande'' vol. 12, Rouen, 1858, and ''Biographie Rouennaise'', Rouen, 1865.
External links
Louise Levesqueon
data.bnf.fr
{{DEFAULTSORT:Levesque, Louise
18th-century French dramatists and playwrights
18th-century French poets
18th-century French women writers
French women poets
Writers from Rouen
French women dramatists and playwrights
French opera librettists
Collectors of fairy tales
1703 births
1745 deaths