Letters of a Portuguese Nun

Letters of a Portuguese Nun

First page of the first edition
Author	Gabriel-Joseph de La Vergne, comte de Guilleragues
Original title	Les Lettres Portugaises
Country	France
Language	French
Genre	Epistolary fiction
Publisher	Claude Barbin
Publication date	1669

The Letters of a Portuguese Nun (French: Les Lettres Portugaises, literally The Portuguese Letters), first published anonymously by Claude Barbin in Paris in 1669, is a work believed by most scholars to be epistolary fiction in the form of five letters written by Gabriel-Joseph de La Vergne, comte de Guilleragues (1628–1685), a minor peer, diplomat, secretary to the Prince of Conti, and friend of Madame de Sévigné, the poet Boileau, and the dramatist Jean Racine.

From the start, the passionate letters, in book form, were a European publishing sensation (in part because of their presumed authenticity), with five editions in the collection's first year, followed by more than forty editions throughout the 17th century. A Cologne edition of 1669 stated that the Marquis de Chamilly was their addressee, and this was confirmed by Saint-Simon and by Duclos, but, aside from the fact that she was female, the author's name and identity remained undivulged.

The original letters were translated in several languages, including the German, Portugiesischen Briefen (Rainer Maria Rilke) and Dutch, Minnebrieven van een Portugeesche non (Arthur van Schendel). The letters, in book form, set a precedent for sentimentalism in European culture at large, and for the literary genres of the sentimental novel and the epistolary novel, into the 18th century, such as the "Lettres persanes " by Montesquieu (1721), "Lettres péruviennes" by Françoise de Graffigny (1747) and "Julie, ou la nouvelle Héloïse" by Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1761).