Memoirs of a Blind Woman: A New Translation

A Blind Woman's Vision of an Extraordinary Life

At the height of the French Enlightenment, one woman presided over the most brilliant salon in Paris-even after darkness claimed her sight.

Marie Anne de Vichy-Chamrond, Marquise du Deffand, was born into Burgundian nobility in 1697 and destined for the convent. But the precocious child who scandalized her guardians with skeptical questions would not accept the life chosen for her. Instead, she entered the glittering, dissolute world of the Regency court, where wit was currency and intelligence its own aristocracy.

Now, in her twilight years, blind but unbowed, the legendary saloniste dictates her extraordinary memoirs. From convent rebellions to royal intrigue, from passionate friendships with Voltaire to her complex relationship with the young Horace Walpole, Madame du Deffand reveals a world of philosophical debates and aristocratic scandals, of love denied and ambition realized.

Through her sightless eyes, we witness the age of Enlightenment from within-its brilliance and its blindness, its revolutionary ideas and its ancient prejudices. Here is 18th-century France in all its paradox: a society that produced both rigid hierarchy and radical thought, that confined women yet allowed some to wield extraordinary influence.

Originally published under Alexandre Dumas's name in 1856, this fictionalized memoir by Comtesse Dash (Gabrielle Anne Cisterne de Courtiras) brings to vivid life one of history's most fascinating women-a blind woman who saw her century with unparalleled clarity.