Art and Literature

Marie du Deffand

Marie Du Deffand

CHARRIER-VOZEL Marianne
Connoisseurs of art and literature from all over Britain were known to grace Madame du Deffand’s salon on rue Saint-Dominique. Her correspondence with Horace Walpole gives us a window into how Franco-British epistolary relationships helped shape new spaces of sociability, both real and imagined.
Marie-Jeanne Riccoboni

Marie-Jeanne Riccoboni

CHARRIER-VOZEL Marianne
England held a special allure for French readers. This attraction is evident in the titles Marie-Jeanne Riccoboni gave to her novels as much as in the names of her characters. Her correspondence with David Garrick and Robert Liston also reveals the fundamental role sociability played in both the circulation of theatrical works between the two countries and in the evolution of eighteenth-century theatrical creation.
Mary Berry

Mary Berry

SCHMID Susanne
Mary Berry (1763-1852), renowned traveller, author, and salonnière, friend of Horace Walpole's, headed sociable circles in London but also spent time in the vicinity of Strawberry Hill.She became the posthumous editor of Walpole's correspondence, and authored two plays as well as historiographical works.
Mary Delany by John Opie

Mary Delany

KERHERVÉ Alain

Mary Delany (1700-1788) has remained famous for her correspondence and her flower collages. Her life also provides a perfect illustration of a woman seeking participation to collective activity and court, all the while relying on her sense of propriety to adapt to new sociable circles or to organize her own assemblies.

Ned Ward

Ned Ward

DAVISON Kate
Edward ‘Ned’ Ward was a satirist and tavern keeper active in early eighteenth-century London, best known for his London Spy (1698-1701) – a walkabout tour of the metropolis that typified his hearty comic style and eye for graphic detail. For the history of sociability, his works offer vivid contemporary representations of meeting and mixing among both the high-life and low.
Shelley

Percy Shelley (the sociable nightingale)

HORTOLLAND Pauline
Far from following the script of the lone Romantic genius, Percy Shelley (1792-1822) purposely cultivated numerous friendships with the most talented writers of his time. In his preface to Prometheus Unbound, Shelley even endeavoured to theorize the complex workings of poetic influence, implicitly acknowledging the creative potential of sociability.