LOUISE

See also:

• COLET, JOHN (1467?-1519)
• LOUISE COLET (1810–1876)

COLET (1810–1876)  , French poet and novelist, was born at Aix of a Provencal family named Revoil, on the 15th of September 181o . In 1835 she came to Paris with her husband Hippolyte Colet (1808–1851), a composer of music and professor of harmony and counterpoint at the conservatoire . In 1836 appeared her Fleurs du Midi, a volume of verse, of liberal tendency, followed by Penserosa (1839), a second volume of verse; by La Jeunesse de Goethe (1839), a one-act comedy; by Les Cceurs brises (1843), a novel; Les Funerailles de Napoleon (1840), a poem, and La Jeunesse de Mirabeau (1841), a novel . Her works were crowned five or six times by the Institute, a distinction which she owed, however, to the influence of Victor Cousin rather than to the quality of her work . The criticisms on her books and on the prizes conferred on her by the Academy exasperated her; and in 1841 Paris was diverted by her attempted reprisals on Alphonse Karr for certain notices in Les Guepes . In 1849 she had to defend an action brought against her by the heirs of Madame Recamier, whose correspondence with Benjamin Constant she had published in the columns of the Presse . She produced a host of writings in prose and verse, but she is perhaps best known for her intimate connexion with some of her famous contemporaries, Abel Villemain, Gustave Flaubert and Victor Cousin . Only one of her books is now of interest—Lui: roman contemporain (1859), the novel in which she told the story of her life . She died on the 8th of March 1876 .