SOURCE: Palmer, Melvin D. “Madame d'Aulnoy in England.” Comparative Literature XXVII, no. 3 (summer 1975): 237-53.

[In this essay, Palmer details the reception of d'Aulnoy's writings in England, focusing on her travel narratives and memoirs.]

In the fourteen years from 1690 to 1703, Marie-Cathérine Jumelle de Barneville, Mme d'Aulnoy, wrote ten works that were translated into English by 1721 and came to occupy an important place in the history of French-English prose fiction in the formative years that saw the rise of the modern novel.¹ These include three pseudo-autobiographical accounts of travel translated as The Lady's Travels into Spain, The Memoirs of the Court of Spain, and The Memoirs of the Court of England; three sentimental, historical romances and a collection of sentimental tales translated as The History of the Earl of Warwick, Hypolitus Earl of Douglas, The Prince of Carency, and The Spanish Novels (actually, tales); and finally, three collections of fairy tales, including twenty-four tales and three frame stories, of which all but seven tales appeared in English in four collections: Tales of the Fairies, the last part of Mme d'Aulnoy's Diverting Works, The History of the Tales of the Fairies, and A Collection of Novels and Tales of the Fairies.²

All of the stories appeared at least twice in English. By 1740 at least thirty-six editions of Mme d'Aulnoy's work had been published in England. One title, The Lady's Travels into Spain, went into a twelfth edition and was serialized in two periodicals, again by 1740. This work went through more editions in England than it did in France and Holland combined. In the first thirty years of its publishing history there were more English editions of the Travels into Spain than there were of Galland's popular Arabian Nights and more than all of the editions of Mme de Lafayette's works. Similar examples of the popularity of the Travels into Spain could be cited without difficulty. And even excluding the Spanish Memoirs and Travels, Professor McBurney's Check-List of English Prose Fiction, 1700-1739 (Cambridge, Mass., 1960) has more listings for Mme d'Aulnoy than for any of her French contemporaries. It is a sad commentary on the fate of this writer that the one reference to her in a well-known and widely used literary history of England is erroneous: It points out that Tom Brown achieved “great success with his translation of Mme d'Aulnoy's letters, which he called Memoirs of the Court of Spain.”³ It is the Travels that is composed of letters, not the Memoirs, and Mme d'Aulnoy should perhaps receive more credit than Tom Brown. Furthermore, there is no complete bibliography of English translations of Mme d'Aulnoy's work in English.

In view of the remarkable popularity of Mme d'Aulnoy in England in the four or five decades after 1690 and the general neglect of her work since then, the lack of a study of her reputation, literary character, and influence in England seems a lacuna worth filling—even though her works, with some exceptions, merit the neglect they have received. But there are some works of sufficient literary merit to deserve attention today. An investigation of her work should also prove an important index to translating practices and reading tastes in the years just before Richardson and the great mid-century novelists in England.

It must be admitted at the outset that Mme d'Aulnoy's personal reputation in England rested largely on a volume of pseudomemoirs that was taken to be the memoirs of her own life, Memoirs of the Countess of Dunois written by her Self (1699), with subsequent editions in the 1707 and 1715 Diverting Works.⁴ Even though they were considered authentic until the twentieth century,⁵ the Memoirs is actually a sentimental romance, the fictional creation of Mme de Murat. On the basis of this romance, a story of continuous amorous intrigue, a good part of Mme d'Aulnoy's public in England must have thought her highly experienced in affairs of the heart, but sincere, honest, sensitive, and unfairly persecuted. In any case, the book no doubt contributed to Mme d'Aulnoy's popularity in England and may help to explain why several other works which were not hers were attributed to her: the belief that they would sell better under the name of the unfairly persecuted (or notorious) “Countess” d'Aulnoy. Mme d'Aulnoy, however, did not need the facts of her life dressed up. Her life could easily have been the subject of a romance: it included, for example, an illegitimate child and a conspiracy with her mother and two male acquaintances to frame her husband (many years her senior) on the charge of treason.⁶

Mme d'Aulnoy made her debut in English anonymously in 1691 with a translation of a conte from Hypolite as The History of Adolphus and with The Lady's Travels into Spain.⁷ In the following year appeared the Memoirs of the Court of Spain. The only other new work of hers to appear in English before 1707 was a translation of four of the fairy tales in 1699 (again, without her name attached). There were two other editions of the Court of Spain and six of the Travels into Spain by 1707. Until 1707, then, English readers knew Mme d'Aulnoy's name only through the spurious memoirs mentioned above, though they had read her Spanish Memoirs and Travels and witnessed the inauguration of the English vogue for French fairy tales. By the end of 1708, however, a flood of her books had appeared in English, some bearing her name and making reference to her Travels. First was the Diverting Works of the Countess D'Anois, containing, in addition to the spurious memoirs above, her Spanish Novels and a number of fairy tales (some not hers). In the same year Warwick, her first sentimental novel, and the Memoirs of the Court of England appeared in English.⁸ These were followed in 1708 by new editions of Warwick, the Court of England, the Travels into Spain (seventh edition), and the first appearance of Hypolitus, Earl of Douglas. By 1711, Mme d'Aulnoy's name had become a byword for “novelist,” as evidenced by a letter of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu: “Would you have me write novelles like the Countess of D'Anois? and is it not better to tell a plain truth?”⁹ All titles saw at least two editions by 1719 when The Prince of Carency appeared. Except for some fairy tales in 1721, Carency was the last work of Mme d'Aulnoy to be translated into English. The popularity of the fairy tales and especially the Travels remained undiminished until 1740.

As I have shown, Mme d'Aulnoy first made her mark as an author of memoirs written in the first person and set in her own time. She and her translators gauged popular taste well, for sentimental fiction was then becoming less fashionable. The immediate popularity in England of her Spanish works indicates that audiences there were more interested in realism, journalism, and first-person accounts (of lives, voyages, and so on), than in romances. The Earl of Shaftesbury was correct when he observed that “The whole writing of this age is become indeed a sort of memoir writing.”¹⁰

Prepared for in the 1690s by several English editions of the Spanish Memoirs and Travels and supported by works falsely attributed to her—Memoirs of the Court of France (1692) and Memoirs of the Countess Dunois (1699)—her English reputation as an author of memoirs reached a high point in 1707-08 with a new edition of the Travels, a translation of the English Memoirs and other works not hers—the Secret Memoirs of the Duke and Duchess of O … and a new edition of the memoirs of her own life in the Diverting Works. Most of the title pages of these works refer to Mme d'Aulnoy's success with memoir writing. The word “memoirs” was even worked into the English title of her sentimental novel Hypolitus, Earl of Douglas. Containing Some Memoirs of the Court of Scotland (1708). By 1711, the title had become The Memoirs of the Court of Scotland and was advertised on the title page as “Written by the Author of the Ladies Travels into Spain, and the Memoirs of the Court of England, and the Memoirs of the Earl of Warwick.” Warwick, in fact, carried the word Memoirs in the running title of its English editions. In short, so strong was the vogue of memoir writing that the term was applied even to works which were not memoirs.

Both of the Spanish works were translated into English by competent men. We do not know who translated the Travels into Spain, but he must have had a nice wit of his own in order to transfer Mme d'Aulnoy's sprightly style into English. The Memoirs was translated by Tom Brown. In neither work are there any major alterations in the text.¹¹ Eleven of the fourteen editions of the Travels were in book form; one was an abridgement in John Harris' 1705 Navigantium atque Itinerarium Bibliotheca; and the other two were in the periodicals Parker's Penny Post (January 1726 to April 1727) and the Lady's Magazine (1738-39). In fact, the Travels into Spain helped inaugurate the latter magazine and the selection was thus no small feather in Mme d'Aulnoy's cap, for, according to Robert D. Mayo, there were only forty-four “known works of prose fiction of any length” published in periodicals in the two decades before 1740, and these consisted of “either a few old favorites or more recent works of some reputation … like Oroonoko, the Arabian Nights … d'Aulnoy's Travels into Spain.”¹² In his treatment of “best sellers” of the seventeenth century, Professor Mish postulated that ten editions might reasonably qualify a seventeenth-century work of fiction as a best seller.¹³ If we apply these standards to the Travels into Spain, the publishing history of the work is outstanding. Furthermore, the audience that the Travels commanded, as indicated by those influenced by it—the dramatist Southerne and the novelist Defoe, for example—shows that the Travels was a work of uncommon literary appeal.¹⁴

In fifteen letters, the Travels narrates a journey from France to Spain and a sojourn in Madrid. The major figure of the book is the feminine narrator, the author of the letters, who makes the journey with an infant to visit her “kinswoman.” Important in the history of English prose fiction is the fact that this work is the locus classicus of the journey novel told in letters.¹⁵ All students of epistolary fiction credit Mme d'Aulnoy for this accomplishment, but no one has made it clear that the Travels is actually a model for two types of epistolary fiction. The first part of the Travels is the journey told in letters, while the journey is taking place; but the latter part, composed of letters written while in Madrid, is not an account of a journey but of a sojourn in a place. As such, the second half bears a family relationship to such works as Eliza Haywood's Bath-Intrigues: in Four Letters to a Friend in London (1725). The whole tendency of these works is related to two other forms of contemporary fiction: accounts of court scandal and intrigue, and the satirical accounts of foreign observers. Mme d'Aulnoy's Travels stands near the beginning of these two streams of fiction, but there is very little court gossip in the Travels, and Mme d'Aulnoy does not exploit the ironic, satirical possibilities that Montesquieu, Walpole, Goldsmith, and many others were to find in the genre.

In the Memoirs of the Court of Spain Mme d'Aulnoy focuses on the period from 1679-1681, the first years of the marriage of Marie-Louise of Orleans and Charles II. Spain excited a particular interest in England (and in the rest of Europe) because of its decline and the related problem of the Spanish succession. As Spain became weaker and weaker, the rest of Europe was obviously interested in the effect this deterioration would have on political and economic alliances. Less serious readers were no doubt attracted to the Memoirs because it centered on the situation of a young, sensitive queen, the victim of a political marriage to the weak Charles II of Spain. The queen, incidentally, plays a role in the concluding portion of the Travels into Spain. Fresh in the minds of those interested in court gossip was the fact of Marie-Louise's recent death and the rumor that she had died of poisoning. For this reading public, the young queen was a symbol of the suffering, innocent, sensitive young woman; and the fictional embellishments of the Memoirs no doubt allied Marie-Louise with the heroines of romance.¹⁶

There is in the Memoirs little amorous intrigue like that in the Memoirs of the Court of England. The complications are mainly political, and the main theme of the book is the political intrigue of a court experiencing a depression, governed by weak ministers, and ruled by an incompetent king. Structurally, the Memoirs is quite frequently weak in coherence. The author jumps abruptly from episode to episode. In spite of this weakness, however, it is to Mme d'Aulnoy's credit that she brought to the Memoirs the appeal of fiction, especially in the invention of a first-person narrator to impart a measure of liveliness, subjectivity, and intimacy to her account.

As in the case of the Spanish works, the Memoirs of the Court of England contains no major alterations of the French original.¹⁷ It is the only work of hers that approaches the scandalous novel, although, as we have seen, several scandalous novels were attributed to her. In addition to being an expert on Spain, Mme d'Aulnoy was thought of as a quite prominent purveyor of court gossip, the author of several works of more or less scandalous amorous intrigue, including Warwick. This reputation was certainly undeserved. Warwick appears scandalous only in its opening pages; it quickly becomes a serious, sentimental novel. And the Court of England is not as crude as the scandal novels falsely attributed to Mme d'Aulnoy. The tone of these memoirs is rather one of playful galanterie than one of out-and-out scandal. Mme d'Aulnoy was apparently uncomfortable with the chronique scandaleuse, for despite the great popularity of the genre, she did not use her talent and reputation to capitalize on the vogue. Instead, she turned her attention to the fairy tale. Mme d'Aulnoy seems to have been primarily a romantically tempered person and not a cynical recorder of amorous intrigue. It is unfortunate that her name has been linked with that of Mrs. Manley, one of the leading women writers of the time in England, who was the author of scandalous fiction and of little else.

The bulk of the Memoirs of the Court of England narrates a six-day succession of amorous adventures that involve the Dukes of Buckingham, Monmouth, Arran, and other noblemen with several ladies of the court. Since the Memoirs begins and ends in the style of the chatty, familiar letter, some have been tempted to regard the work as a record of Mme d'Aulnoy's own observations;¹⁸ but there is no evidence to show that the adventures recorded really took place nor even that Mme d'Aulnoy ever went to England. The work must be regarded as fiction. As such, it suffers in comparison with the Travels into Spain, for the letter form is dropped almost immediately and is picked up again only at the end. There is only one personal reference between these points. Had Mme d'Aulnoy pursued in this largely fictional work the letter form of the largely factual Travels, she would have pushed the art of epistolary fiction even farther than she did in the Travels.

On the basis of Mme d'Aulnoy's memoir works on Spain and England, it seems reasonable to give her a place in the development that led to the realistic, journalistic novel. She clearly looks forward to such writers as Defoe, who was influenced by her Travels. If we keep this in mind, we can avoid the shortsightedness of twentieth-century attitudes that would dismiss her memoirs, especially the Spanish works, as plagiarisms, “factual,” or “hoaxes.”¹⁹ Instead, we shall be able to credit her with helping to bridge the gap between current history and novel.

Mme d'Aulnoy's sentimental romances and tales were not so immediately popular in England as her realistic fiction. In fact, with the exception of a conte taken from Hypolite, these works did not appear in England until her reputation as an authority on Spain and an author of interesting memoirs had been well established. She was good box office by 1707 and 1708 when her romantic fiction first began to appear in English dress. Since there was a flourishing market for love stories, it is not surprising that translators turned to her and that she was thus brought into the stream of French love tales that had been appearing in England since the 1670s.²⁰ When she appeared on the other side of the channel, she was given a warm welcome. The four volumes containing her romantic fiction—The Earl of Warwick; Hypolitus, Earl of Douglas; The Prince of Carency; and the Spanish Novels (tales)—collectively reached fourteen English editions in the course of the eighteenth century and were influential enough to lead Professor Foster to list Mme d'Aulnoy along with Marivaux and Prévost as writers who probably helped shape the kind of English novel represented by Richardson.²¹

The first of Mme d'Aulnoy's historical romances to appear in English was the last she wrote, Le Comte de Warwick (1703), translated in 1707 as The History of the Earl of Warwick, Sirnam'd the King-Maker: Containing his Amours. Although her hero is not the Guy of Warwick of medieval romance, the very title of her book had an additional appeal because of the great popularity of fiction dealing with this legendary figure who had first appeared in French verse in the thirteenth century and then in five Middle English works. Early printers issued romances about him, and he continued to be a popular figure into the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in heroic poems, prose tales, ballads, and chapbooks.²²

The story deals with the years from 1461 to 1471, the period from the accession of Edward IV to the death of the Earl of Warwick. In Mme d'Aulnoy's book, Warwick is a widower from the beginning of the work, whereas he was really survived by his wife, Anne Beauchamp—not mentioned by Mme d'Aulnoy. She makes him a sentimental lover whose actions, including his revolt against the king, are all motivated by a great passion for the fictitious Countess of Devonshire. The conclusion of the story gives an excellent sample of the flavor of this kind of fiction:

Till this fatal Moment, she (The Countess of Devonshire) had had the Power over herself to conceal the infinite tenderness she had for him; but now all these Passions contain'd hitherto within the bounds of the Empire of Reason, broke forth with so much impetuosity, that with a thousand Cries and Lamentations, she threw herself upon the dead and bloody Corpse of her faithful Lover. Here she shed a torrent of Tears, which was not stopp'd but with the Loss both of her Sight and Voice, her Eyes remain'd fixed without the least Motions upon him. Her delicious red and white Complexion, changed into a deadly paleness: They endeavored to draw her away by force; but she squeezing the Earl's hand close to her Bosom, fetch'd a very deep sigh, and so expired in the Arms of her Woman, before they were able to remove her from the place, or give her any real Assistance; happy in her Misfortunes, because her grief would not suffer her to outlive what she loved.²³

Warwick is today the most readable and technically the best of the three historical romances. It has greater unity of action, time, and place than the other two, and does not jump so easily from country to country. It neither contains subplots which lead away from the main action, nor does it have the large number of characters and incidents that mar so much of this kind of fiction.

In spite of the technical superiority of Warwick, Hypolitus has the best English publishing record of Mme d'Aulnoy's three romances.²⁴ It went through three editions by the 1740s and appeared four times in the dozen years around 1770, a period significant for a revival of romance and the development of Gothic fiction in England. Among Mme d'Aulnoy's works this record is surpassed only by the Travels into Spain.

The romance is set primarily in England during the time of Henry VII, but a large part of the action takes place in France and Italy. The historical frame is indeed thin, for unlike Mme d'Aulnoy's other two romances, the title character (like almost all the other characters) is fictitious. Mme d'Aulnoy employs here the traditional techniques of multiplication of improbable character and episode, the motifs of storms, sea journeys, pirates, forged and intercepted letters, separations, disguises and mistaken identities, and the digressive inset tale. To include all this material in one hundred thousand words, she had to write a swift narrative. The emphasis is thus largely on action rather than character. The action traces the numerous attempts of Hypolitus and Julia of Warwick to surmount obstacles to the consummation of their love and marriage, and tells of their final success.

The even more complicated plot of Mme d'Aulnoy's other romance, together with a marred denouement, may account for the fact that the book was not translated until 1719, an unusually late date for a work of hers to appear in England. And when it did appear, the translator took liberties to reduce some of the plot's complications and to alter the denouement. It was translated as The Prince of Carency; a Novel. In the 1723 and 1724 editions the publisher altered the title to appeal to the increasing taste for collections of “novels”:²⁵The History of John of Bourbon, Prince of Carency. Containing a Variety of entertaining Novels, Viz … and then there follows a list of ten titles suggesting that the work is indeed a collection of stories; but it is not, for the editions are identical to that of 1719.

The novel is set in the late fourteenth century and deals in part with actual historical events. The action takes place in Spain, France, Italy, Turkey, North Africa, and on the Mediterranean Sea. Unlike Hypolitus, the Prince of Carency is an actual historical figure, though an obscure one. The major female character, Leonida de Velasco, is probably fictitious, as is her family. Once again, such commonplaces as separations, disguises, battles, storms, and capture (this time by the Moors) abound.

At the conclusion of her story, Mme d'Aulnoy has Leonida killed and then introduces the historical Catherine D'Artois, the ward of Carency, whom he is urged to marry. Though this denouement squares the story with history, it sacrifices the usual and expected pattern of romance, which was for the pair to live happily ever after (as in Hypolitus) or to achieve union through a romantic and mutual death (as in Warwick). The anonymous English translator, outraged by the story's conclusion, changed the story: Leonida is merely wounded and survives to marry Carency. He thus made the characters more consistent for his English audience and rewarded virtue. He also reduced the length of the romance (which in French was about thirty thousand words longer than either Hypolite or Warwick) by about one-fourth. These alterations constitute the major liberty any English translator took with Mme d'Aulnoy's material, and one cannot fail to approve of them. Carency is better in English than in French, though it is still the most highly complicated of any of Mme d'Aulnoy's romances in English. Further, judging by its three editions, the number of editions of the technically similar Hypolitus, and the degree of popularity of the old heroic romances,²⁶ this type of fiction was apparently enjoyed in England in the early eighteenth century.

The six Spanish tales in the 1707 and 1715 Diverting Works are called “novels” (after the French nouvelles), but they actually belong to the realm of short fiction, though the last runs to about forty thousand words. The main setting of these tales, all written in the third person and from an omniscient point of view and all sentimental, is the Spanish court in and around Madrid. One of the best is the first, “The History of the Marquis of Lemos and Doña Eleanora of Monteleon,” which depicts an orphaned young lady of the court whose brother tyrannizes over her until she meets the Marquis of Lemos and, in spite of her brother's continued machinations, manages to overcome the obstacles. Her brother repents, reforms, and the two lovers are married. Anyone familiar with the sentimental tale in Italy and France as modified by Spanish settings and motifs (that is, by Cervantes and others) will find here—as elsewhere in these tales—a number of familiar motifs: masquerades, mistaken identities, duels and swordplay in general, cloak-and-dagger mystery, ambushes, thwarted love, and the like. Most familiar of all will be a theme found everywhere in the seventeenth century: the conflicting demands of love and honor.

The similarities between the first tale and the next four make it unnecessary for us to treat the latter in detail. Let us look instead at the last of the tales, the longest and from the point of view of structure and technique the most interesting of the collection: “The History of the Marquis of Mansera and Doña Teresa of Castro.” The story is in two sections: (1) a recitation by Dona Teresa Eleonora of her long relationship with Mansera and (2) a collection of seventy letters written by Teresa to Mansera. Through the technique of the récit personnel and the letter, this nouvelle anticipates the two main forms that eighteenth-century fiction took, the autobiographical and the epistolary, both of which gave a new psychological emphasis and subjective tone to fiction in the early eighteenth century. The half of the tale composed of seventy letters—quite a number for one piece of fiction—stands without internal or terminal comment by author or character. Like many another writer since the appearance of the Lettres portugaises in 1669, Mme d'Aulnoy exhibits an interest in epistolary fiction; letters are prominent not only in this work but in the Memoirs of the Court of England (where one passage is told by the Duke of Buckingham through letters), and, as we have seen, in the Travels into Spain. Mme d'Aulnoy was evidently familiar with the Lettres portugaises, for she referred to it in her Memoirs of the Court of England.²⁷ Her letters are therefore quite possibly a conscious imitation of the Lettres portugaises, especially the collection in the Teresa and Mansera story. Like the Lettres portugaises, this collection is supposed to be entirely from the pen of a sensitive, emotional young woman, who, though not a nun, is cloistered in the sense that her severe family and, later, her husband through a forced marriage keep close guard over her.

The letters give a graphic illustration of the psychology of romantic love, of its fears and its blisses. Mme d'Aulnoy comes closer here than anywhere else in her fiction to endowing sentimentality with a measure of nobility and of genuine pathos. The emotions here are almost convincing.

Such are the sentimental novels and tales of Mme d'Aulnoy. If the pre-Romantic novel in England, as is usually maintained, was developed largely by the little-known French writers who came after Mme de Lafayette and led up to Prévost and Richardson, then Mme d'Aulnoy's place in this development is perhaps greater than hitherto recognized (Foster, loc. cit.). Though she stumbles, she is indeed moving toward Richardson: Pamela's grandmothers were women like Mme d'Aulnoy's Julia of Warwick, Leonida of Velasco, the Countess of Devonshire, and Doña Teresa of Castro.

English lovers of fiction did not stop reading Mme d'Aulnoy after the advent of the great mid-century novelists. Indeed, twelve new editions of four of her works appeared before the century was out. These four are the Travels into Spain, the History of the Tales of the Fairies, A Collection of Novels and Tales of the Fairies, and Hypolitus. With the century's fondness for autobiographical and epistolary fiction, it is not at all surprising that the Travels continued to entertain readers and inform them about Spain in editions of 1774 and 1780. Nor is it surprising that a period which saw a revival of interest in romance in particular and things romantic in general found new delight in five editions of Hypolitus and five editions of her fairy tales.²⁸

In spite of J. M. S. Tompkins' remark that “France did not at this time exercise any determining influence over English fiction,”²⁹ Mme d'Aulnoy figured prominently in this new upsurge of interest in romance. Her Hypolitus saw new editions in 1766, 1769, 1774, and 1778. In 1765 Clara Reeve, though objecting, as one might expect from this rationalist, to the “wild and improbable” aspects of Hypolitus, was aware that the work “had then, and even now has its admirers.”³⁰ Further, Mme d'Aulnoy was obviously appropriated by at least one author of sentimental, historical fiction. Though the main borrowings of Alexander Bickwell's History of Lady Anne Neville, Sister of the Great Earl of Warwick (1776) are from Prévost's Histoire de Marguérite d'Anjou (1740), Bickwell takes the incident of Edward IV's and Warwick's rivalry for the Countess of Devonshire directly from Mme d'Aulnoy's Hypolitus. In general, however, England chose to incorporate sentimentality in novels of sensibility and the Gothic novel rather than to write purely sentimental, historical romances as the French did.

From the sentimental novel to the Gothic romance is not a large step, as has frequently been pointed out.³¹ Thus, the connection between Gothic fiction and Mme d'Aulnoy's sentimental romances and tales is worth mentioning. Of all the authors of Gothic fiction it is with Ann Radcliffe that Mme d'Aulnoy's romances have the closest affiliation. In fact, Foster has suggested that the name of the hero of her Sicilian Romance (1790), “Hippolitus, as well as a few minor borrowings, probably came from Mme d'Aulnoy's Hypolitus” (op. cit., p. 266). He might have added that the name of the heroine, Julia—especially as the object of Hippolitus' love—perhaps also came from Mme d'Aulnoy. Foster suggests a general similarity between Mme d'Aulnoy's romances and the Radcliffian novel, but he does not explore the likeness. Both wrote historical novels. A large part of Mme d'Aulnoy's Hypolitus takes place in Italy, the favorite setting for a Radcliffe novel. The Sicilian Romance is primarily a story of love, the love of Julia and Hippolitus, who, as in Mme d'Aulnoy, are separated for a large part of the novel, neither knowing whether or not the other is alive. Mrs. Radcliffe's Julia, like Mme d'Aulnoy's, is promised in marriage to a villainous character whom she detests and from whom she flees. Both heroines spend time in a convent and then run away from it. Both stories have episodes of mistaken identity, storms, and a sea journey. In Mrs. Radcliffe the pirates become Sicilian banditti. In both stories minor characters enter, tell their “histories,” and somehow or other become involved in the main plot. But above all, A Sicilian Romance is the story of a tearful heroine and a sensitive and faithful hero and of their attempts to outwit a villainous suitor of the heroine's. Such parallels are general and thus inconclusive as proof of specific influence, but they are at least interesting indications of the kind of general influence Mme d'Aulnoy's sentimental, pseudohistorical romances had on the English novel in the late eighteenth century.

One element in A Sicilian Romance (as in other Gothic fiction for that matter) does not resemble anything in the romances of Mme d'Aulnoy but does crop up in the numerous Spanish nouvelles, of which Mme d'Aulnoy's collection is an example: the Gothic reliance on darkness and gloomy natural settings. One example will suffice. In the nouvelle about Teresa and Mansera, Teresa, after her forced marriage to another, is taken to a “strong house … in the Neighborhood of Carthagena; which on one side is washed by the Sea, the other being hid by Hills and Woods.”³² In addition, the story's repeated references to night reinforce the Gothic atmosphere. At this point we are quite far away from the formal garden and polite conversation, a long way from the salon. We are closer in spirit to Prévost and the Gothic romance of the late eighteenth century.

Except for an “eleventh” edition of the Travels into Spain in 1808 and a reprint of the first four letters of this work in 1899,³³ the fortune of Mme d'Aulnoy in the nineteenth century rested entirely on her fairy tales. This shift of interest from her other work to the fairy tales was in fact signalled by Clara Reeve in 1785 when she recalled Mme d'Aulnoy primarily as a “famous composer of fairy tales” (op. cit., p. 260). The year 1817 marked the last edition of the 1721 fairy tales and apparently the last time that their frame stories were printed in English. During the nineteenth century, Mme d'Aulnoy's fairy tales began to be published in children's editions or in versions where the editor selected, shortened, and otherwise adapted the tales. It was in the middle years of the century, however, that Mme d'Aulnoy's fairy tales found their greatest champion, J. R. Planché, a man noted for his antiquarian and scholarly interests. Planché gave twenty-two of the tales a new translation in 1855, and also turned several of them into one-act “fairy extravaganzas” in verse.³⁴ Planché's work was followed later in the century by a close translation of all of Mme d'Aulnoy's fairy tales.³⁵

Except for the occasional appearance of one or more of these tales in collections of fairy tales intended for children, the twentieth century has all but forgotten Mme d'Aulnoy. The 1912 translation of the Mémoires de la cour d'Angleterre owes its existence to antiquarian interests and to the mildly curious, as does the 1930 Broadway Travellers edition of the Travels into Spain. These are indeed indifferent relics of the “Countess” d'Aulnoy, that “Celebrated French Wit” who delighted English readers for several decades after 1690.

Notes

1. Though she was often called “Comtesse,” Mme d'Aulnoy's husband was a baron. Her name is variously spelled, in English texts, as d'Aunois, d'Aunoy, d'Anois, and Dunois. Arundell Esdaile's List of English Tales and Prose Romances Printed before 1740 (London, 1912) lists her work under “La Mothe,” the surname of her husband. Wing's Short-Title Catalogue (New York, 1945-51) lists her name under “Berneville” and “Aulnoy.” For information on Mme d'Aulnoy's biography, canon, and works falsely attributed to her, see Raymond Foulché-Delbosc, “Madame d'Aulnoy et l'Espagne,” Révue hispanique, 67 (1926), 1-151. Two pious works and a factual account of the wars in Holland were not translated into English. The ten works translated into English are: Histoire d'Hypolite, Comte de Duglas (1690); Mémoires de la cour d'Espagne (1690); Relation du voyage d' Espagne (1691); Histoire de Jean de Bourbon, Prince de Carency (1692); Nouvelles espagnoles (1692); Mémoires de la cour d'Angleterre (1694); Les contes des fées (1697); Contes nouveaux ou les fées à la mode (1698); Suite des contes nouveaux ou des fées à la mode (1698?); and Le Comte de Warwick (1703).

2. … Nancy B. Palmer and I have prepared two studies of the French fairy tale in England: English Editions of French Contes de Fées Attributed to Mme d'Aulnoy (SB, 1974, 227-32) and The French Conte de Fée in England (SSF, 1974, 35-44). For this reason, I do not deal with the tales here in any detail. …

3. Literary History of England, ed. Albert C. Baugh (New York, 1967), p. 818.

4. Mémoires de la Comtesse ** (1697), and again as Mémoires de la Comtesse D*** (1698). The D no doubt invited the English translator to call it Mme d'Aulnoy's.

5. See, among others, Donald Stauffer, The Art of Biography in Eighteenth Century England (Princeton, 1941), pp. 69-71.

6. For her biography, see Foulché-Delbosc; for the problem of her visit to Spain, see my article, “Mme d'Aulnoy's Pseudo-autobiographical Works on Spain,” RF, 83 (1970), 221.

7. See my article “The History of Adolphus (1691); The First French Conte de fée in England,” PQ, 49 (1970), 565-67.

8. Though the English memoirs were advertised in 1695, no copies of such an edition are extant. …

9. The Complete Letters of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, ed. Robert Halsband (Oxford, 1965), I, 293.

10. Characteristics, ed. John M. Robertson (London, 1900), I, 132.

11. The 1703 (5th) edition of the Travels into Spain contains “a letter / By an English Gentleman / Of the Present State of Spain to the Year 1700.”

12. The English Novel in the Magazines, 1740-1815 (Evanston, 1962), p. 59.

13. Charles C. Mish, “Best Sellers in Seventeenth-Century Fiction,” PBSA, 47 (1953), 356.

14. See John W. Dodds, Thomas Southerne, Dramatist (New Haven, 1933), p. 199, and A. W. Secord, Studies in the Narrative Technique of Defoe (Urbana, 1924), p. 202.

15. See Robert Adams Day, Told in Letters (Ann Arbor, 1966), pp. 32-33. Mary Delarivière Manley had Mme d'Aulnoy in mind when she wrote her Letters Written by Mrs. Manley (1696), published in 1713 and 1725 as A Stage-Coach Journey to Exeter.

16. See my article “Mme d'Aulnoy's Pseudo-autobiographical Works on Spain” for an attempt to place the Spanish Memoirs and Travels in the context of developing fiction, though here I do not deal with the English appearance and influence of the works.

17. The claim of the 1708 edition, as elsewhere in these English appearances, to be “Corrected” is meaningless. The dedicatory letter of the 1707 edition is signed “J. C.,” possibly the initials of Jodocus Crull, a minor translator of the day, and perhaps the translator of the work. In this first English edition there appeared for the first time half of a work called The Lady's Packet of Letters, the other half of which appeared the same year in the translation of Mme d'Aulnoy's Earl of Warwick. The Packet is by Mrs. Manley, and both portions were published together in 1711 as Court Intrigues. The publishers apparently tried to capitalize on Mme d'Aulnoy's name.

18. See George David Gilbert's Introduction to Mrs. William Henry Arthur's translation, Memoirs of the Court of England in 1675 (London, 1912).

19. See Foulché-Delbosc, p. 90; James Rush Beeler, “Madame d'Aulnoy: Historical Novelist of the Late Seventeenth Century,” Diss. University of North Carolina, 1964, p. vi; and Percy G. Adams, Travelers and Travel Liars, 1660-1800 (Berkeley, 1962), p. 98. Beeler's work, though it does not deal with the English reputation and influence of Mme d'Aulnoy, is an illuminating discussion of her historical novels.

20. For this general vogue, see Charles C. Mish, “English Short Fiction in the Seventeenth Century,” SSF, 6 (1969), 233-329.

21. James R. Foster, The History of the Pre-Romantic Novel in England (New York, 1949), pp. 19-20, 113.

22. See Laura A. Hibbard, Medieval Romance in England (New York, 1924), pp. 127-38.

23. (London, 1708), II, 174.

24. See Appendix [not reprinted here] for other works not by Mme d'Aulnoy that were included in this edition.

25. See, for example, McBurney's Check-List for 1719, 1720, and 1721.

26. One should not forget that Heliodorus' Ethiopian History, one of the grandfathers of this type of fiction, saw new English editions in 1686 and 1717.

27. (London, 1707), p. 371.

28. Not including the 1752 and 1799 editions of Queen Mah which contained some tales by Mme d'Aulnoy.

29. The Popular Novel in England, 1770-1800 (London, 1932), p. 67.

30. The Progress of Romance (Facs. ed., 1930), II, 60.

31. See, for example, Devendra Varma, The Gothic Flame (London, 1957), p. 35.

32. Diverting Works (London, 1707), p. 229.

33. A reprint of Vol. I of 1692 (2nd) ed. of Travels. The author of the introduction seems to think these four letters constitute the work.

34. Fairy Tales by the Countess d'Aulnoy (London, 1855) and The Extravagances of J. R. Planché, esq., 1825-1871 (London, 1892).

35. The Fairy Tales of Mme d'Aulnoy, trans. Miss Annie Macdonell and Miss Lee (London, 1912).