Louise d'Épinay

Louise Florence Pétronille Tardieu d'Esclavelles d'Épinay (11 March 1726 – 17 April 1783), better known as Mme d'Épinay, was a French writer, a saloniste and woman of fashion, known on account of her liaisons with Friedrich Melchior, Baron von Grimm, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who gives unflattering reports of her in his Confessions, as well as her acquaintanceship with Denis Diderot, Jean le Rond d'Alembert, Baron d'Holbach and other French men of letters during the Enlightenment. with genuine letters and autobiographical material. Bequeathed to Baron Grimm, a mangled version of the manuscript was edited by J. P. A. Parison and J. C. Brunet (Paris, 1818) as Mémoires et correspondance de Madame d'Épinay with all the names changed to identify the supposed originals: Madame d'Épinay figures in it as Madame de Montbrillant, and René is generally recognized as Rousseau, Volx as Grimm, Gamier as Diderot, who is sometimes credited with major interventions in the text. The work has had a checkered career since. The only accurate edition is George Roth, ed. Les Pseudo-mémoires de Madame d'Épinay, 3 vols., 1951.

Other works Her Conversations d'Émilie, a dialogue recollecting the education of her granddaughter, Émilie de Belsunce, was published in 1774. The , was published at Paris (1818) from a manuscript which she had bequeathed to Grimm.

Many of Madame d'Épinay's letters are contained in the (1818), which provided material for Francis Steegmuller's joint biography, and have since appeared in a definitive redaction. Two anonymous works, Lettres à mon fils (Geneva, 1758) and Mes moments heureux (Geneva, 1759), are also by Madame d'Épinay.

In January 1783, three months before her death, she was awarded the Prix Monyon, recently established by the Académie to honour the author of the "book published in the current year that might be of most benefit to society"; it was her Conversations d'Émilie (1774).

Issue Louis-Joseph de La Live d'Épinay (25 September 1746 – 10 April 1813), a military, editor and musician. Françoise-Suzanne-Thérèse de La Live d'Épinay (24 August 1747 – 3 June 1748), died in infancy. Angélique-Louise-Charlotte de La Live d'Épinay (1 August 1749 – 1 June 1824), recognized by Denis d'Épinay as his own, but she probably was a product of her mother's affair with Louis Dupin de Francueil. Jean-Claude Leblanc de Beaulieu (29 May 1753 – 13 July 1825), also a child of Louis Dupin, he was sent to the countryside and entered in church. He later was Bishop of Soissons and Arles.