Marie-Anne de Roumier-Robert

Marie-Anne de Roumier-Robert (1705 – 12 January 1771) was a French writer. She wrote one of the earliest known works of science fiction, Voyage de Milord Céton dans les sept planètes ("Lord Seton's Voyage Among the Seven Planets", 1765).

Biography Marie-Anne Roumier was from a family related to Bernard Le Bovier de Fontenelle and received a good education. Her talent for writing had been noticed by Fontenelle. Ruined by Law's, she retired to a convent before marrying Jean Paul Robert, a lawyer in Parliament, in 1737.

She was representative of the rise of women's writing in the 1760s. In her novels, she featured women using philosophical discourses. In Les Ondins, a moral tale and Amazon utopia published in 1768, she defended the idea of a woman being able to choose the man she was to marry.

Her work presents a permanent tension on the question of being able to be both a woman and a philosopher of the Enlightenment, while the Enlightenment excluded women from reason.

Publications