Madame de Sévigné’s Letters and the Formation of Elite Community

This article concerns the role played by letters written by Marie de Rabutin-Chantal, Madame de Sévigné (1626–96) to her daughter Francoise-Marguerite de Sévigné, comtesse de Grignan (1646–1705) between 1671 and 1696 in the formation of networks and transnational communities. As the closest form of writing to speech (according to Erasmus), letters were ideally suited to the conversation of friends and familiars, and thus to maintaining and forming networks. Sévigné wrote to maintain intimacy with Grignan in spite of the distance between them, and to launch her in elite society. She drew her into dialogue with her friends, and guided her to exploit networking opportunities. During her lifetime, Sévigné’s writing was admired for its combined lightness of touch and seriousness of intent. Following the 1725 posthumous publication of selected epistles, Sévigné’s letters were rapidly translated into English and English writers self-consciously imitated and adapted her style to fit their own networking ambitions.