Considered by many scholars to be among the most brilliant novels written in French during the eighteenth century, Lettres de Mistriss Henley publiees par son amie was composed as a response to Samuel de Constant's misogynist novel, The Sentimental Husband (1783). Charriere presents six letters penned by a Mistriss Henley, who has chosen a decent and affectionate man as her life's companion only to discover that she cannot bear sharing his life. An immediate success on its publication in 1784, Mistriss Henley was greeted with acclaim and controversy: one reader...

Set in prerevolutionary France, Histoire d'Ernestine tells of the love between an innocent young woman and an aristocrat. Ernestine, German-born and orphaned, is an apprentice painter putting the finishing touches on a portrait when the marquis de Clemengis, elegant and handsome, enters the studio. Recognizing him as the subject of the portrait, she gestures for him to be seated and goes on working, looking back and forth between him and his likeness. The world-weary aristocrat is smitten.

In graceful, understated prose, Marie Riccoboni shows how her heroine learns to...