Her first marriage, in 1743, was annulled after two years. In 1746 she left France to become a governess in London.[1] After a successful publishing career in England, she remarried, bore many children, and left England to live the rest of her life in Savoy.
Her first work, the moralistic novel The Triumph of Truth (Le Triomphe de la Vérité) was published in 1748. She continued her literary career by publishing many school books (Éducation complète, ou Abrégé de l'histoire universelle, 1762; Le Mentor moderne, 1773). She then began to publish collections she called "magazines" of educational and moral stories and poems for children. She was one of the first to write fairy tales for children.[2] She also wrote other based on traditional fairy tale themes, such as Aurore and Aimée. [3]
Another well-known storyteller of the era, Mme Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve, wrote a story titled Beauty and the Beast. Le Prince de Beaumont considerably revised and abridged this story, and always included the revised version in the many "magazines" she published over the next 30 years. The success of this shorter revised version is why Le Prince de Beaumont is commonly deemed the author of the classic story.
Footnotes
^ Zipes, J., Beauty and the Beast and Other Classic French Fairy Tales. P 131. ISBN 0-451-52648-1
^ Zipes, J., The Great Fairy Tale Tradition: From Straparola and Basile to the Brothers Grimm. P. 863. ISBN 0-393-97636-X
^ Zipes, J., The Great Fairy Tale Tradition: From Straparola and Basile to the Brothers Grimm. P. 543. ISBN 0-393-97636-X
References
1843. Le magasin des enfants. Paris: Warée.
1978. Nouveau cabinet des fées, vol. 17. Jacques Barchilon, ed. Geneva: Slatkine.
2000. Contes et autres écrits. Barbara Kaltz, ed. Oxford: Voltaire Foundation.
