Ridiculed for her Saturday salon, her long romance novels, and her protofeminist ideas, Madeleine de Scudery (1607-1701) has not been treated kindly by the literary establishment. Yet her multivolume novels were popular bestsellers in her time, translated almost immediately into English, German, Italian, Spanish, and even Arabic.
"The Story of Sapho" makes available for the first time in modern English a self-contained section from Scudery's novel "Artamene ou le Grand Cyrus," best known today as the favored reading material of the would-be "salonnieres" that Moliere satirized in "Les...

Madeleine de Scudery (1607-1701) was the most popular novelist in her time, read in French in volume installments all over Europe and translated into English, German, Italian, and even Arabic. But she was also a charismatic figure in French salon culture, a woman who supported herself through her writing and defended women's education. She was the first woman to be honored by the French Academy, and she earned a pension from Louis XIV for her writing. Selected Letters, Orations, and Rhetorical Dialogues is a careful selection of Scudery's shorter writings, emphasizing her abilities as a...