Lhéritier de Villandon, Marie‐Jeanne
Lhéritier de Villandon, Marie‐Jeanne (?1664–1734),French writer. Daughter of a Royal Historiographer and the niece of Charles Perrault, Lhéritier received an exceptional education for a woman of her day. Although little is known of her early life, she became a prominent participant in literary circles of the 1690s and 1700s, contributed frequently to the Mercure Galant, won prizes sponsored by the Académie française, was given honorary membership in literary academies, and is said to have inherited Madeleine de Scudéry's salon upon that writer's death. Throughout her lifetime, she published several collections of her works—poetry, letters, novellas, and fairy tales. She also edited the memoirs of her protectress, the duchesse de Nemours (1709), and translated Ovid's Heroides into French (1723).
Lhéritier was a key player in the group of writers who inaugurated the late...
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