- MADELEINE DE SCUDERY By Dorothy McDougall
Mlle. de Scudery (1607-1701) is rioted in the text-books as the author of very long-winded romances, Le Grand Cyrus and Clelie, for which her brother Georges, the dramatist, took the credit and 'much of the royalties. Miss McDougall's biography (Methuen, 2s. 6d.), apparently the first in English, re- veals her as a clever and attractive woman who in middle life gathered all the literary folk round her, despite Moliere's Precieuses Ridicules, and in her old age was the close friend of Madame de Maintenon, Louis XIV's morganatic wife. Mlle. de Scudery knew so many eminent persons in her long career that this compact memoir seems at times overcrowded, but it deserves a patient reading. We are made to realise that serious literature was the fashion in that troubled age when we are told that Pellisson, Madeleine's intimate friend, made his reputation in society with a translation of the institutes of Justinian. Miss McDougall aptly quotes Dorothy Osborne's letters to Temple to show how passionately Cyrus and Clelie were admired by contemporary readers. The authoress lived 'to see them outmoded, but she had none the less marked a new stage in the development of the novel, and shown, too, though under her brother's name, that a woman could earn her living by her pen. Miss McDougall's book is well documented and illustrated with portraits.
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