Far from Home in Early Modern France: Three Women’s Stories

Showcased here are three French women who ventured far from home at a time when such traveling was rare. In 1639, Marie de l’Incarnation embarked for New France where she founded the first Ursuline monastery. In 1750, Madame Du Boccage set out at the age of forty on her first “Grand Tour,” visiting England and the Netherlands, and seven years later on a second, venturing to Italy where she experienced firsthand the intellectual liberty offered there to educated women. As the Reign of Terror gripped France, the Marquise de La Tour du Pin fled to America with her husband and their two young children, where they ran a farm from 1794 to 1796. The writings these women left of their journeys abroad represent significant contributions to early modern travel literature and to life writing.

Far From Home makes available to anglophone readers three texts that are rich both historically and in literary terms. It introduces three women who left France, either voluntarily or involuntarily, and traveled very far or very widely — to New France, the young United States, and in bold Grand Tours to sites in England, the Netherlands, Italy, and Spain. They narrated their journeys and experiences with considerable writerly skill and insight. Supported by a very helpful and robust apparatus, Colette Winn’s introduction is masterful at unpacking the web of genres represented in the writing of these three women.

-Carla Zecher, PhD, Executive Director, The Renaissance Society of America

COLETTE H. WINN, professor emerita of French at Washington University in St. Louis, specializes in editing early modern writings by women.

LAUREN KING received her MA in French literature from Washington University in St. Louis in 2017.

ELIZABETH HAGSTROM received her BA in French and International and Area Studies with a focus in European Studies from Washington University in St. Louis.