Galerie de femmes célèbres (Sainte-Beuve)
Також відомий як: Les femmes célèbres, les femmes célèbres, femmes célèbres, Galerie de femmes célèbres, "Les femmes célèbres" par Sainte-Beuve
Overview
Marie's Les femmes célèbres by Sainte-Beuve is most probably the Galerie de femmes célèbres, tirée des Causeries du lundi (Paris, Garnier frères; an illustrated volume of Sainte-Beuve's portraits of women, reissued several times from the end of the 1850s), a collection of essays picked from the weekly Causeries du lundi of Charles-Augustin Sainte-Beuve (1804-1869). The contents of the c. 1862 edition (checked on the Internet Archive scan) are: Marguerite de Navarre, Marie Stuart, Madame de Motteville, la Grande Mademoiselle, Mademoiselle de Scudéry, Madame (duchesse d'Orléans), Madame de Sévigné, Madame de Maintenon, Madame de Caylus, la duchesse de Bourgogne, la duchesse du Maine, Madame de Lambert, Madame Necker, Madame Geoffrin, Marie-Antoinette, Goethe et Bettina, Madame Récamier, Madame Émile de Girardin, Madame de Tracy, Eugénie de Guérin and la duchesse d'Angoulême.
Identification
The diary's title does not exist as such in Sainte-Beuve's bibliography (RSR note at 016.0338 suggested his Portraits de femmes, 1844, instead). The Galerie is the better candidate for three reasons: its title is the diary title, it is a ready-made popular volume that a bookshop (Visconti, in Nice) would stock, and it contains the essay on Madame Récamier, whom Marie remembers in her first mention as the unnamed woman whose hairstyle and dress she wants to copy. The match is not certain: the edition Marie owned in 1873-75 has not been seen, and Sainte-Beuve's other collections (Portraits de femmes, vols of the Causeries du lundi) also contain portraits of women. Confidence about 0.7.
Marie and this work
- 9 November 1873 (012.0141). "Il y a des livres charmants : Les femmes célèbres par Sainte-Beuve, il y a une femme, j'oublie le nom... Récamier ? Je veux un jour me coiffer comme elle, et... m'habiller, c'est-à-dire me déshabiller comme elle. Qu'elle est belle." Madame Récamier (1777-1849) is famous for David's portrait of her reclining in a white Empire dress, which is probably the image Marie has in mind (RSR note at the paragraph); see Portrait of Madame Récamier (David).
- 19 February 1874 (016.0338). In Nice she orders from Visconti, the bookseller, "Les femmes célèbres par Sainte-Beuve et La femme par Larcher" (see Larcher).
- 6 and 12 March 1875 (030.0140, 030.0182). She spends an evening reading it, "puis à relire mon ancien journal", and in an agitated moment on the 12th reads "un passage des femmes célèbres" between looking in the mirror and smoking.
The remaining entries that the inventory lists (030.0368 and 039.0115) are not about the book: they use "femmes célèbres" in its ordinary sense (a friend's plan to become famous women through eccentric dress; Marie's wish to leave portraits and descriptions to posterity).
Sources
- Internet Archive scan of the Galerie de femmes célèbres (Garnier, c. 1862): contents list and the Madame Récamier essay (p. 307).
- fr.wikisource author page for Sainte-Beuve, and bookseller listings of Garnier's Galerie (found by search) for the dating of the editions.
- Diary paragraphs as cited above.
The glossary has no entry for this work; `LARCHER.md` (the companion book) is a separate stub, and Sainte-Beuve is the author entry. The inventory pointed at LARCHER by mistake.