A Woman, a Man, and Two Kingdoms: The Story of Madame d'Epinay and the Abbe Galiani

by Francis Steegmuller

Pre-revolutionary Paris comes to life in this fascinating story surrounding the correspondence between two colorful and witty society figures: the French author Louise d'Épinay and the Italian priest-diplomat Ferdinando Galiani. Their friends included Voltaire, Diderot, Melchior Grimm, and the famous women of the salons, and their letters touched upon everything from social gossip to issues of education and politics. Francis Steegmuller's book is at once a unique history and a charming account of friendship sustained in a turbulent age.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Biography

280 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1991

About the author

Francis Steegmuller was an American biographer, translator and fiction writer, who was known chiefly as a Gustave Flaubert scholar.

Reviews

[Elizabeth · Rating 2 out of 5]

Woman, A Man, And Two Kingdoms, A: The Story of Madame d'Epinay and the Abbe Galiani (Hardcover)
by Francis Steegmuller

[Don · Rating 3 out of 5]

After reading several books on Ben Franklin earlier in the year, I was looking forward to finding similar portraits of great personalities in European circles during the Enlightenment period. Although I was not wholly disappointed with the actual drawing of the main characters of this unfolding narrative through letters of a Paris and Naples connection that was interesting in itself, I had a hard time understanding these persons within a broader context of the period. The correspondence between the parties is indeed charming and the author gives ample examples of how their friendship progressed along the way, but gives an understated sense of their world, other than their roles of being a foreign diplomat or of being a liberated woman and teacher. The writers are authoring Dialogues and Conversations, showing that they are interested in greater philosophical and social issues, and not just motivated by economical justice or manners alone, and some such acknowledgement should have been made more clear.
A helpful overview that would make this tender story of two friends more enjoyable would have been to read "Fictions of Reality in the Age of Hume and Johnson" by Leo Damrosch, to get the sense that is lacking in Steefmuller's work. Although Damrosch writes about Britain rather than of France or Naples, he identifies the divide between the fictive and the real in the political conservatism that is the result of wanting to be part of a consensus, and having a hard time achieving it, in the second half of the eighteenth century.
Steegmuller affirms that Madame d"Epinay and the Abbe Galiani spent much of their time seeking approval from each other and from those in their circles. To see this as a wider problem of the time would have made the book much more insightful. These two friends were successful because they understood, as Franklin himself did, that Christian charity is an act of freedom that sets one free from self. How to experience that freedom within social norms and expectations is the problem that arises within Enlightened societies.

[Sylvia Grass · Rating 3 out of 5]

At first I had a hard time getting into this book but as it went along I found myself geeking out on details of Paris and the royal families.as an avid letter writer I love that these letters have been saved and the book explains circumstances and details that make the letters comprehensive to the reader.