A Cyclopaedia of Female Biography/Beauharnais, Fanny, Countess de
BEAUHARNAIS, FANNY, COUNTESS DE,
The aunt of Josephine's first husband, was born at Paris, in 1738. Her father was receiver-general of finances, and he gave her a brilliant education. From her earliest youth, she showed a great taste for poetry. At the age of seventeen, she was married to Count de Beauharnais, whom she did not love, and she soon separated from him by taking up her residence in the convent of the Visitation. Here she assembled around her the most distinguished literary and scientific men; but she was criticised as well as flattered; and though Buffon called her his daughter, Le Brun wrote epigrams against her.
In 1773, Madame de Beauharnais published a little work entitled "A Tous les penseurs Salut," in which she undertook the defence of female authorship. But this was considered a strange instance of audacity, though the women of France then ruled everything from state affairs down to fashionable trifles. Le Brun, a bitter and satirical poet answered Madame de Beauharnais in a strain of keen invective. "Ink," said he "ill becomes rosy fingers." Madame de Beauharnais published a volume of fugitive poems; also "Lettres de Stephanie," an historical romance, several other romances, and a comedy entitled "La Fausse inconstance ou le triomphe de l'honnéteté. She died in 1813.