Lives of The Most Eminent Literary and Scientific Men - Lives of The Most Eminent Literary and Scientific Men of France

Lives of The Most Eminent Literary and Scientific Men of France

The two-volume Lives of the Most Eminent Literary and Scientific Men of France includes the following works by Mary Shelley: Montaigne, Corneille, Rochefoucauld, Molière, Pascal, Madame de Sévigné, Boileau, Racine, Fénelon, Voltaire, Rousseau, Condorcet, Mirabeau, Madame Roland, and Madame de Staël. Rabelais and La Fontaine are by an as yet unidentified author. Shelley was the only contributor to Lardner's Cabinet Cyclopaedia to give such pride of place to female biographical subjects. In these volumes, "she stretched the definition of 'Eminent Literary Men' not just by including two more women but by her choice of a quartet of French revolutionary personalities who were political actors more than, or as much as writers: Condorcet and Mirabeau, Mme Roland and Mme de Staël". As Clarissa Campbell Orr, a recent editor of the French Lives, explains, this choice "represents a concerted attempt to disassociate the early ideals of the French Revolution from its subsequent extremism and state-authored bloodshed".

Mary Shelley worked on the French Lives from the end of 1837 until the middle of 1839 and she was paid £200 upon their completion. No other substantial projects occupied her during this time and research materials were easily accessible; she even subscribed to a specialist circulating library to acquire books. She wrote to her friend Leigh Hunt of the project, "I am now writing French Lives. The Spanish ones interested me—these do not so much – yet, it is pleasant writing enough – sparing one imagination yet occupying one & supplying in some small degree the needful which is so very needful."

Mary Shelley spoke French fluently and was knowledgeable about 17th- and 18th-century French literature. Although she was distilling other works, the biographies are still deeply personal works and have autobiographical elements. Orr writes that they "are the culmination of her work for Lardner, and represent the final stage of a sustained overview of four literatures. Few British women of letters in the 1830s could command this extensive range and write so confidently about four national cultures." Orr compares Shelley to the 19th-century historical writers Lady Morgan, Frances Trollope, Anna Jameson, and Agnes and Eliza Strickland. Shelley's assessment of French literature was not as generous as her evaluation of Italian literature. She criticized its artificiality, for example. However, the biographies are "written with a sprightly narrative thrust and an agreeable tone". She also often provided her own translations and focused on themes that resonated with her own life.

The French Lives provided Shelley with a way to celebrate literary women, particularly salonniéres. In her life of Madame de Sévigné, Shelley celebrates "her chaste widowhood; her loyalty as a friend; her maternal devotion". However, Orr writes that it is difficult to see a pattern in the way Shelley addresses gender issues in these volumes. She argues that "the most consistent 'feminism' displayed throughout lies in her examination of French attitudes toward love, marriage, and sexuality". Shelley sympathetically portrays customs such as taking lovers, explaining the custom in the context of France's arranged marriages. Overall, Orr explains, Shelley's "historical sympathy for the varied circumstances of women's relationships mirrors her personal practice of understanding and assisting those of her women friends who transgressed moral norms". The biographies of Roland and Staël focus on their abilities and the social forces that both helped and hindered them from succeeding. Shelley argues that women are as intellectually capable as men, but lack a sufficient education and are trapped by social systems such as marriage that restrict their rights. The emphasis that Shelley places on education and reading reflect the influence of her mother's A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792). In these two biographies, Shelley reinforces contemporary gender roles while at the same time celebrating the achievements of these women. She describes Roland through traditionally feminine roles:

She was her husband's friend, companion, amanuensis; fearful of the temptations of the world, she gave herself up to labour; she soon became absolutely necessary to him at every moment, and in all the incidents of his life; her servitude was thus sealed; now and then it caused a sigh; but the holy sense of duty reconciled her to every inconvenience.

Shelley also defends Roland's "unwomanly" actions, however, by arguing that they were "beneficial" to French society. Shelley's most overt feminist statement in the French Lives comes when she criticises Jean-Jacques Rousseau's novel Julie, or the New Heloise (1761), writing "his ideas ... of a perfect life are singularly faulty. It includes no instruction, no endeavours to acquire knowledge and refine the soul by study; but is contracted to mere domestic avocations".

Sixty review copies of each volume were sent out, but only one short notice of the first volume of French Lives has been located, in the Sunday Times. The volumes were pirated in the United States by Lea and Blanchard of Philadelphia and reviewed by Edgar Allan Poe in Graham's Lady's and Gentleman’s Magazine in 1841. He wrote, "a more valuable work, when considered solely as an introduction to French literature, has not, for some time, been issued from the American press".