Geneviève de Malboissière

Geneviève-Françoise Randon de Malboissière, also known as Laurette de Malboissière (21 December 1746 – 22 August 1766) was a French-born poet, playwright, correspondent and multi-language translator.

Biography Geneviève-Françoise Randon de Malboissière was born into a well-off Paris family. Her father was Jean-Louis Randon de Malboissière (d. 7 October 1763), cashier of the sub-farms of aid and estates successively in Amiens, Soissons, and then Tours, and her mother was Françoise-Marie-Jeanne Picquefeu de Longpré, daughter of a secretary to the king, Louis XV.

Geneviève-Françoise, also known as Laurette de Malboissière, was tutored at home starting in natural history and mathematics as well as a number of languages in which she became fluent: German, English, Italian, Spanish, Greek and Latin. In 1764, she began lessons in drawing and dancing. Among her instructors was the naturalist Jacques-Christophe Valmont de Bomare who was hired to give her, and her cousins, a science education.

According to a letter written in 1762, her enthusiasm for the theater began at the age of five after attending a performance of Inès de Castro by Antoine Houdar de La Motte. Later, as a passionate theater-goer, she rented a box at the Comédie-Française three times a week and at the Comédie-Italienne as well as the famed Opéra Garnier, located at the Place de l'Opéra in Paris.

Selected works Published work 1766: Ilphis and Zulie (a comedy in one act) 1866: Laurette de Malboissière: lettres d'une jeune fille du temps de Louis XV (Laurette de Malboissière: Letters of a young girl from the time of Louis XV) (1761-1766) (correspondence) 1925: An au xviii e century. Letters from Geneviève de Malboissière to Adélaide Méliand (1761-1766) (correspondence)

Unpublished work Private archives of the Marquis de Luppé, Château de Beaurepaire, Department of Oise (France): Méliand and La Grange fonds: From page 106, Correspondence littéraire, philosophique et critique, by Grimm, Diderot, Raynal, Meister, éd. M. Tourneux, Paris, Garnier Frères, 1877–1882, t. VII [sept 1766]):

“We recently made a loss that deserves to be noticed. Miss Randon de Malboissière has just died at the flower of her age. She was about eighteen or nineteen years old. […] She was already famous in Paris for her knowledge. She understood and perfectly understood seven languages, namely: Greek, Latin, Italian, Spanish, French, German and English; she spoke modern languages perfectly. Her parents are said to be inconsolable about the loss, and it's easy to understand."