Marie Jeanne Riccoboni

Marie-Jeanne Riccoboni (October 25, 1713 in Paris - December 7, 1792 in Paris), whose maiden name was Laboras de Mézières, was a French actress and novelist.

She was born in Paris in 1713.

In 1735 she married Antoine François Riccoboni, a comedian and dramatist, from whom she soon separated. She herself was an actress and had moderate success on the stage.

Madame Riccoboni's work is among the most eminent examples of the "sensibility" novel; among the parallels cited in English literature are works by Laurence Sterne and Samuel Richardson. A still nearer parallel may be found in the work of Henry Mackenzie.

She obtained a small pension from the crown, but the Revolution deprived her of it, and she died in Paris on December 7, 1792 in great poverty.

For more biographical details, see the Web site of the Association Riccoboni (mainly in French).

Apart from authoring the works listed below, Riccoboni was the editor of a periodical, L'Abeille (1761), wrote a novel (1762) on the subject of Fielding's Amelia, and supplied in 1765 a continuation (but not the conclusion sometimes erroneously ascribed to her) of Marivaux's unfinished Marianne. Riccoboni also corresponded with such luminaries as Pierre Choderlos de Laclos, author of Les Liaisons Dangeureuses, as well as David Hume and the theater celebrity David Garrick (see J.C. Nicholls, ed. Madame Riccoboni’s letters to David Hume, David Garrick, and Sir Robert Liston : 1764-1783, Oxford: The Voltaire Foundation, 1976).

Some of her better known works are:

For a more complete survey of literature on Mme Riccoboni, see the bibliography by the Association Riccoboni.

 This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "". Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. 

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