Family Name: Thiroux d’Arconville
First Name: Marie-Geneviève
Birth Date: Tue, Oct 15, 1720
Birth Place: Paris
Death Date: Sat, Dec 21, 1805
Death Place: Paris
Main places of activity:
Place
Paris
Place
Crosnes
Personal info:
Education

Very little is known on Madame d'Arconville's education. However it seems she had a pretty neglegted education. Several scholars suggested that she learned how to write at the age of eight. Coming from an aristocratic family, it is very likely that she received an artistic education though, which would explain her interest in art throughout her life and her drawing skills.

In languages (English and Italian) and natural sciences she was self-taught. At the Jardin des Plantes in Paris offered courses on physics, anatomy, botany and chemistry to both men and women, Madame d'Arconville might have attended some classes there.
Career

In 1735, at the age of fourteen, she married Louis Lazare Thiroux d'Arconville and gave birth to three sons by the end of the decade. As a married women, Madame d'Arconville had an active social life: she hosted a litterary salon and went very regularly to the theater and to the opera. In the 1740s however, she moved towards a more autere lifestyle fulfilled by studying. Some have seen in the smallpox she contracted in 1742, which left her badly scarred, the reason for her withdrawal from society, others interpret it as a new maturity arisen from her proximity of death.

For the next twenty years also, Madame d'Arconville dedicated herself to the study of natural sciences, encompassing a large range of disciplines. In these years, she translated, adapted and produced many works regarding anatomy, botany, and chemistry. In the late 1760s,  she changed the focus of her writings towards literature and started producing novels and historical biographies. The translations of this period also took on a more literary orientation. During the 1770s and 1780s, for example, she translated Aphra Behn's Agnes de Castro, George Lyttelton's Letters from a Persian in England and James Hervey's Meditations among the Tombs.

The French Revolution put on hold her literary activities, forced her into exile and caused the gradual financial ruin of her family. In 1794/5 after the death of her elder son, Madame d'Arconville was allowed to retrun to Paris, where she died in 1805.
Financial Situation

Aristocratic background.
Translations Other Works

translations activities

Madame d'Arconville translated British literature and treatises from English.

She is known for her French versions of treaties on anatomy, chemistry, botanic and moral, such as P. Shaw's Chemical Lectures, Alexander Monro's Treatise on Osteology or George Savile's Advice from a Father to his Daughter.

She also translated various literary genres, such as poetry, novels, essays, by Aphra Behn, George Lyttelton or James Hervey.

Her translations, published anonymously, were very often annotated and commented. For translations in her area of expertise, she even proposed corrections and additions.


For further information her supposed and effective translations, see the "Corpus des Œuvres de Madame d'Arconville", Patrice Bret et Émilie Joly pp.151-169, in P. Bret, Madame d’Arconville. Une femme de lettres et de sciences au siècle des Lumières, 2016.





secondary bibliography references

M. A. Bernier & M.-L. Girou Swiderski (Eds.), Madame d'Arconville, moraliste et chimiste au siècle des Lumières: Edition critique. Oxford, Voltaire Foundation. 2016. [included in this volume autobiographical texts from Madame d'Arconville's Pensées, réflexions et anecdotes, 1766]

F. Bernier Briquet, Dictionnaire historique, littéraire et bibliographique des Françaises [...], Paris 1804, pp.13-14.

P. Bret & B. Van Tiggelen (dir.), Madame d'Arconville. Une femme de lettres et de sciences au siècle des Lumières, Paris, Hermann, 2011.


Girou Swiderski M.-L., "La carrière «sur mesure» de Madame d'Arconville" in Femmes des Lumières recherches en arborescences, H. Krief,  et al., Paris, Classiques Garnier, 2018, pp. 241-256.

Krief, Huguette. « Retraite féminine et femmes moralistes au siècle des Lumières », Dix-huitième siècle Madame d'Arconville. Une femme de lettres et de sciences au siècle des Lumières, vol. 48, no. 1, 2016, pp. 89-101.

Reichard, Karen B. ,"Marie-Geneviève Thiroux D'Arconville (1720-1805)", in Spencer, Samia I. (ed.). Writers of the French Enlightenment. Vol. II. Detroit: Thomson Gale, 2005, pp. 181–185.

***

BNF, Notice de persone: Thiroux d'Arconville, Marie-Geneviève-Charlotte (1720-1805). Available on: https://catalogue.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/cb12003002v

Translations

  • Meditations Among the Tombs

  • Translation Title: Méditations sur les Tombeaux
  • Original Author: James Hervey
  • Original title: Meditations Among the Tombs
  • Publ. Year From: 1745 to:
  • lang: English
  • Translation: Méditations sur les Tombeaux
  • Publisher: Chez Lacombe
  • Pub. Place: Paris
  • Pub. Date: 1769
  • Lang: French
  • Note:

    Published anonymously

  • Chemical Lectures

  • Translation Title: Leçons de chimie
  • Original Author: Peter Shaw
  • Original title: Chemical Lectures
  • Publ. Year From: 1753 to: 1753
  • lang: English
  • Translation: Leçons de chimie
  • Pub. Date: 1757
  • Lang: French

  • Letters from a Persian in England and Agnes de Castro

  • Translation Title: Romans traduits de l'anglois
  • Original Author: VV. AA.
  • Original title: Letters from a Persian in England and Agnes de Castro
  • lang: English
  • Translation: Romans traduits de l'anglois
  • Pub. Date: 1759
  • Lang: French
  • Note:

    Translations of G. Lyttelton's Letters from a Persian in England and A. Behn's Agnes de Castro.

  • English Poetry

  • Translation Title: Mélanges de Poésies Anglaises, traduits en français
  • Original Author: VV. AA.
  • Original title: English Poetry
  • lang: English
  • Translation: Mélanges de Poésies Anglaises, traduits en français
  • Pub. Date: 1763
  • Lang: French

  • Advice from a Father to his Daughter.

  • Translation Title: Avis d’un Père à sa Fille
  • Original Author: George Savile
  • Original title: Advice from a Father to his Daughter.
  • Publ. Year From: 1687 to:
  • lang: English
  • Translation: Avis d’un Père à sa Fille
  • Pub. Date: 1755
  • Lang: French

  • The Anatomy of the Humane Bones

  • Translation Title: Traité d'ostéologie, traduit de l'Anglois de M. Monro, où l'on a ajouté des planches en taille-douce, qui répresentent au naturel tous les os de l'adulte & du foetus, avec leurs explications par M. Sue
  • Original Author: Alexander Monro I.
  • Original title: The Anatomy of the Humane Bones
  • Publ. Year From: 1724 to:
  • lang: English
  • Note:

    A few years later Monro published Osteology, or a treatise on the anatomy of bones. To which are added a treatise of the nerves, [...] Edinburg 1732.



  • Translation: Traité d'ostéologie, traduit de l'Anglois de M. Monro, où l'on a ajouté des planches en taille-douce, qui répresentent au naturel tous les os de l'adulte & du foetus, avec leurs explications par M. Sue
  • Pub. Date: 1757
  • Lang: French
  • Note:

    NB. in-foglio edition, with anatomical drawings

calamaio

By:

  • Céline Powell