Letters of A Portuguese Nun - Publication

Publication

From the start, the passionate letters, in book form, were a European publishing sensation (in part because of their presumed authenticity), with five editions in the collection's first year, followed by more than forty editions throughout the 17th century. A Cologne edition of 1669 stated that the Marquis de Chamilly was their addressee, and this was confirmed by Saint-Simon and by Duclos, but, aside from the fact that she was female, the author's name and identity remained undivulged.

The original letters were translated in several languages, including the German, Portugiesischen Briefen, (Rainer Maria Rilke) and Dutch, Minnebrieven van een Portugeesche non, (Arthur van Schendel). The letters, in book form, set a precedent for sentimentalism in European culture at large, and for the literary genres of the sentimental novel and the epistolary novel, into the 18th century, such as the "Lettres persanes " by Montesquieu (1721), "Lettres péruviennes" by Françoise de Graffigny (1747) and "Julie, ou la nouvelle Héloïse)" by Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1761).

Also in 1669, the original publisher, Claude Barbin, published a sequel, again said to have been written by a "Portuguese lady of society," with the addition of seven new letters to the original five. Later, several hack writers wrote serial stories on the same theme. To exploit the letters' popularity, sequels, replies, and new replies were published in quick succession and were distributed, in translation, throughout Europe.

The Letters of a Portuguese Nun were written in the same style as "The Heroides", a collection of fifteen epistolary poems composed by Ovid, and "Lettres d'Héloise à Abélard", a medieval story of passion and Christian renunciation. They form a monologue beginning in amorous passion and slowly evolving, through successive stages of faith, doubt, and despair, toward a tragic end.