Sophie Ristaud Cottin

Sophie Cottin (22 March 1770 – 25 August 1807) was a French writer whose novels were popular in the 19th century, and were translated into several different languages.

Sophie Ristaud Cottin
by Pierre-François Bertonnier (1791–1858)

Biography

Marie Sophie Ristaud (sometimes spelt Risteau) was born in March 1770 at Tonneins. She was not yet twenty when she married her first husband, Jean-Paul-Marie Cottin, a banker. She wrote several romantic and historical novels including Elizabeth; or, the Exiles of Siberia (Elisabeth ou les Exilés de Sibérie 1806), a "wildly romantic but irreproachably moral tale", according to Nuttall's Encyclopaedia. She also published Claire d'Albe (1799), Malvina (1801), Amélie de Mansfield (1803), Mathilde (1805), set in the crusades, and a prose-poem, La Prise de Jéricho. Her writing became more important to her after her first husband died when she was in her early twenties. She went to live with a cousin and her three children at Champlan (Seine-et-Oise) but died at the age of 37 in Paris on 25 August 1807.^[1]

List of works

• Claire d'Albe (1799)
• Malvina (1800)
• Amélie Mansfield (1802)
  • English translation : Amelia Mansfield : a novel (1809)^[2]
• Mathilde (1805)
• Élisabeth ou Les exilés de Sibérie (1806)

References

1. Chisholm 1911.
2. Madame Cottin, Amelia Mansfield : a novel, London : Printed for Henry Colburn ..., 1809, 3 vol.

Bibliography

•  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Cottin, Marie". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 7 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.
• Wood, James, ed. (1907). "Cottin, Sophie" . The Nuttall Encyclopædia. London and New York: Frederick Warne.
• Silvia Lorusso, Le Charme sans la beauté, vie de Sophie Cottin, Paris, Classiques Garnier, 2018. ISBN 978-2-406-08007-7
• Silvia Lorusso, Comment s’affranchir de la passion. Le pouvoir de la religion dans les derniers romans de Sophie Cottin, in F. Bercegol et M. Gardini (dir.), Littérature et religion, in « Cahiers de littérature française », n. 21, 2022, p. 29-40. ISSN 1971-4882 ; ISBN 9-782406-144526
• Silvia Lorusso, Sophie Cottin et la religion, in « Orages », n. 20, 2022, p. 171-181. ISSN 1635-5202
• Silvia Lorusso, Madame Cottin face à Madame de Staël, in F. Bercegol et C. Klettke (dir.), Les femmes en mouvement – L’univers sentimental et intellectuel des romancières du début du XIXe siècle, Berlin, Frank & Timme, 2017, p. 73-87. ISBN 978-3-7329-0322-1
• Silvia Lorusso, Sophie Cottin et « le triste honneur de former une nouvelle école de romanciers », in F. Bercegol, S. Genand et F. Lotterie (dir.), Une « période sans nom ». Les années 1780-1820 et la fabrique de l’histoire littéraire, Classiques Garnier, Paris 2016, p. 205-222. ISBN 978-2-406-05998-1
• Silvia Lorusso, Lettre inédite de Madame Cottin sur la loi du divorce, in « Revue italienne d’études françaises », [Online], n. 1, 2011. ISSN 2240-7456

External links

• Works by Madame Cottin at Project Gutenberg
• Works by or about Sophie Ristaud Cottin at the Internet Archive
• Introduction to Amélie Mansfield
• Cottin's life and works (in French)