Listings for Author:
Madame de Genlis
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[Madame] de Genlis :
'Weeton's reading becomes important in communication with friends, but also a point of conflict: when she visits her brother and his wife, they complain that she spends all her time reading, though she insists that she read very little ("only... Gil Blas, now and then a newspaper, two or three of Lady M. W. Montagu's letters, and few pages in a magazine'), and only because her hosts rose so late. Since her literacy is important as a sign of status, she repeatedly presents herself not as a reader of low status texts like novels but of travels, education works, memoirs and letters, including Boswell's "Tour of the Hebrides", the Travels of Mungo Park, and Mme de Genlis' work. She approves some novels, like Hamilton's "The Cottagers of Glenburnie", but generally finds them a "dangerous, facinating kind of amusement" which "destroy all relish for useful, instructive studies'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Ellen Weeton Print: Book
Madame de Genlis : Letters on Education
'While at Mitchelstown she brushed up on her French by reading Madame de Genlis's Letters on Education, Louis Sebastien Mercier's comedy "Mon Bonnet de Nuit", and the Baroness de Montoliere's novel "Caroline de Litchfield". The first she pronounced "wonderfully clever", and it may well have proved helpful to her as a teacher; the last she described as "One of the prettiest things I have ever read", and it perhaps suggested that her own life could serve as the basis of a sentimental novel'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Wollstonecraft Print: Book
Madame de Genlis : les Veillees du Chateau
'Having just finished the first volume of les Veillees du Chateau, I think it a good opportunity of beginning a letter to you while my mind is stored with Ideas worth transmitting.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Jane Austen Print: Book
Madame de Genlis : Alphonsine, or Maternal Affection
'"Alphonsine" did not do. We were disgusted in twenty pages, as, independent of a bad translation, it has indelicacies which disgrace a pen hitherto so pure; and we changed it for the "Female Quixotte", which now makes our evening amusement; to me a very high one, as I find the work quite equal to what I remembered it. Mrs F.A., to whom it is new, enjoys it as one could wish; the other Mary, I believe, has little pleasure from that or any other book.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Austen family Print: Book
Madame de Genlis : [possibly one of] Nouveaux contes moraux et nouvelles historiques
'Write and finish Walther - In the evening I go out in the boat with Shelley - and he afterwards goes up to Diodati - begin one of Madame de Genlis novels - Shelley finishes Tacitus'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book
Madame de Genlis : Memoires inedits de madame la comtesse de Genlis
'I have tried to read Mme de Genlis' memoirs, but they are one large capital I from beginning to end; this amuses at first - but tires long before we get to the end of 8 vols. - Above all, dear, get the Promessi Sposi - at first you may lag a little, but as you get on the truth & perfect Italianism of the manners and desciptions - the beautiful language which differs from all other Italian prose - being really the Tusca[n] of the day that he writes, & not a bad imitation of the [ ] trecentisti - the pasion & even sublimity of parts rendered it to me a most delightful book - I can imagine a person who had not been to Italy not liking it but to [underlined] us [end underlining] it must be delightful.' [letter to Jane Williams Hogg]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
[Madame] de Genlis : Alphonsine, ou la tendresse maternelle
'Miss James has lent me, and I have been reading Alphonsine - that is the two first volumes - and it has completely bewitched me - I was such an old Ass as to sit up last night till three o'clock, reading - and then snuffed out my candle, and went to bed by daylight., The perfect originality of the plan upon which the story is founded, enchants me - and difficult as such an idea was to developpe, Mde de Genlis I think has done justice to her own design - a felicity many authors fail in attaining. - Oh - (But now another day has passed, and I have finished the three volumes of Alphonsine - and the [underlined] last [end underlining] disgraces the two first - Such a pack of higgledy piggledy stuff, without interest, finish, or any attempt at probability, I never read - Whip the woman!-'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Harriet Burney Print: Book
Madame de Genlis : Religion the only Basis of Happiness and true Philosophy, in which the Principles of the modern pretended Philosophers are laid open and refuted
'If among the books of divinity that you are so kindly offered the use of, you can borrow any of the following, they will help to establish you in the belief of the truth of Divine Revelation:- Paley's Evidences of Christianity; Bishop Watson's Apology for the Bible, in Letters to Thomas Paine; Bishop Porteus' Compendium of the Evidences of Christianity; Addison's Evidences of the Christian Religion; Madam Genlis' Religion the only Basis of Happiness and true Philosophy, in which the Principles of the modern pretended Philosophers are laid open and refuted, 2 vols. Butler's Divine Analogy; Bentley against Collins; Bentley's Sermons on the Folly of Atheism; Jenkins Reasonableness and Certainty of the Chrisian Religion, 2 vols. I have lately read the whole of these works with great satisfaction. If you are fond of real philosophy and astronomy, you will be highly pleased with Bentley's Sermons on the Folly of Atheism. Paley's is an extraordinary good work. Butler's Analogy is a very great work.'
