Sophie Cottin (22 March 1770 – 25 August 1807) was a French writer whose novels were popular in the 19th century, and were translated into several different languages.

Biography

Marie Sophie Ristaud (sometimes spelt Risteau) was born in March 1770 at

Tonneins Tonneins (; oc, Tonens) is a town in the Lot-et-Garonne department of south-western France. It stands above the river Garonne, between Marmande to the west and Agen to the east, and is the first major town below the confluence of the Lot and ...

. She was not yet twenty when she married her first husband, Jean-Paul-Marie Cottin, a banker. She wrote several romantic and historical novels including ''Elizabeth; or, the Exiles of Siberia'' (''Elisabeth ou les Exilés de Sibérie'' 1806), a "wildly romantic but irreproachably moral tale", according to Nuttall's Encyclopaedia. She also published ''Claire d'Albe'' (1799), ''Malvina'' (1801), ''Amélie de Mansfield'' (1803), ''Mathilde'' (1805), set in the

crusades The Crusades were a series of religious wars initiated, supported, and sometimes directed by the Latin Church in the medieval period. The best known of these Crusades are those to the Holy Land in the period between 1095 and 1291 that were ...

, and a prose-poem, ''La Prise de Jéricho''. Her writing became more important to her after her first husband died when she was in her early twenties. She went to live with a cousin and her three children at Champlan (

Seine-et-Oise Seine-et-Oise () was the former department of France encompassing the western, northern and southern parts of the metropolitan area of Paris.Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), ma ...

on 25 August 1807.

List of works

* ''Claire d'Albe'' (1799) * ''Malvina'' (1800) * ''Amélie Mansfield'' (1802) ** English translation : ''Amelia Mansfield : a novel'' (1809)Madame Cottin
Amelia Mansfield : a novel
London : Printed for Henry Colburn ..., 1809, 3 vol. * ''Mathilde'' (1805) * ''Élisabeth ou Les exilés de Sibérie'' (1806)

References

Bibliography

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External links

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(''in French'') {{DEFAULTSORT:Cottin, Sophie Ristaud 1770 births 1807 deaths People from Lot-et-Garonne French women novelists Burials at Père Lachaise Cemetery 18th-century French women writers 18th-century letter writers