Both Claire and her husband, M. d'Albe, are virtuous and upstanding, and Frederic, her husband's nineteen-year-old adopted son and factory assistant, is honest and noble-hearted. But in the beautiful and secluded Loire Valley, the friendship between Claire and Frederic gradually develops into a forbidden passion.

Claire d'Albe (1799) was audacious in its day for its representation of adulterous love as a positive act of self-fulfillment. As the volume editor, Margaret Cohen, indicates, Sophie Cottin's best-selling work of sentimentalism highlights the tension in Enlightenment...