Madeleine de Scudéry

Madeleine de Scudéry (15 November 1607 to 2 June 1701), often called simply Mademoiselle de Scudéry, was a French writer. Her works show such wide knowledge of ancient history that she is suspected to have been taught Greek and Latin. After her uncle died in 1637 she settled in Paris with her brother Georges de Scudéry, a playwright, and she often published under his name, George. She was admitted to the coterie of préciosité at the Hôtel de Rambouillet and later founded her own salon, the Société du samedi, or Saturday Society. Under the pseudonym Sapho or under her own name she was acknowledged during the second half of the seventeenth century as the first bluestocking of France and of the world. She had a close romantic relationship with Paul Pellisson, which ended only with his death in 1693, and she never married.