Craveri, Benedetta 1942–

PERSONAL: Born in Rome, Italy, 1942; married M. Benoît d'Aboville (a French diplomat); children: one.

ADDRESSES: Home—Rome, Italy. Agent—c/o Author Mail, New York Review of Books, 1755 Broadway, 5th Fl., New York, NY 10019.

CAREER: University of Tuscia, Viterbo, Italy, professor of French literature; University of Rome, Rome, Italy, instructor.

AWARDS, HONORS: Comisso and Viareggio prizes (Italy), and Prix du Meilleur Livre Etranger (France), both for Madame Du Deffand e il suo mondo.

WRITINGS:

Madame du Deffand e il suo mondo (Volume 11, "La Collano dei casi" series), Adelphi (Milan, Italy), 1982, translation by Teresa Waugh published as Madame du Deffand and Her World, D. R. Godine (Boston, MA), 1994.

(Editor) Lettere di Mademoiselle Aïssé a Madame, Adelphi (Milan, Italy), 1984.

(Editor) La vita privata del Maresciallo di Richelieu, Adelphi (Milan, Italy), 1989.

(Editor) Salotti/Bernard Minoret e Claude Arnaud, Edinaudi (Turin, Italy), 1989.

(Author of introduction) Elisabeth Vigee Le Brum, Memorie di una ritrattista, Mursia (Milan, Italy), 1990.

(Author of preface and notes) Vie privée du maréchal de Richelieu: contenant ses amours et intrigues, et tout ce qui a rapport aux divers roles qu'a joués cet homme célèbre pendant plus de quatre-vingts ans, Editions Desjonquères (Paris, France), 1993.

La civiltà della conversazione, Adelphi (Milan, Italy), 2001, translation by Teresa Waugh published as The Age of Conversation, New York Review of Books (New York, NY), 2005.

Contributor to periodicals, including New York Review of Books and La Republica. Also translated and introduced Poesie by André Chenier.

SIDELIGHTS: Benedetta Craveri, the granddaughter of Italian philosopher Benedetto Croce, is an Italian scholar of seventeenth-and eighteenth-century French literature and civilization and the author of several books that have been translated for an English-speaking audience. In Madame du Deffand and Her World she studies the life and evolution of the woman who went from libertine to poet, playwright, friend of Voltaire, and witty conversationalist of an artistocratic 1750s Parisian salon.

Madame du Deffand (1696–1780) was born Marie de Vichy-Champrond, and her loveless marriage to a distant cousin was her entry into society at the height of the French Regency period. She became the mistress of the regent, left her husband, and wrote her first play. After the regent died, she became mistress of Charles Hénault, president of the French Parliament, and expanded her fortunes. Other friends included Enlightenment philosopher Jean-Baptiste d'Alembert. As she aged, du Deffand suffered from impaired sight and finally went blind. In old age, she fell in love with young British writer Horace Walpole and sent him gossip from Paris, including the sins of the Marquis de Sade. Her feelings were an embarrassment to Walpole, who may have been reluctant to break off their relationship entirely because he saw Deffand as a mother figure.

Craveri writes in her introduction that the book "tells the story of an ideal—the last one whereby the French aristocracy of the ancien régime recognized itself collectively and the last in which it was able to set itself up once more as a symbol and model for the nation. It was an ideal dictated by elegance and courtesy which allowed sociability to be based on both seduction and reciprocal pleasure, rather than on instinctive brutality and power." New York Review of Books contributor P. N. Furbank called Madame du Deffand and Her World an "absorbing book."

In reviewing the French-language edition of La civiltà della conversazione, Craveri studies conversation in early modern Europe as a vehicle for cultural values, and focuses on the elite women of France. John Rogister wrote in the Times Literary Supplement that "the book is well-produced, and Benedetta Craveri's bibliographical essay is a model of the genre."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Madame du Deffand and Her World, D. R. Godine (Boston, MA), 1994.

PERIODICALS

Belles Lettres, summer, 1995, Katharine M. Rogers, review of Madame du Deffand and Her World, pp. 27-29.

Guardian (Manchester, England), November 23, 2002, Vera Rule, review of Madame du Deffand and Her World, p. 32.

New York Review of Books, November 3, 1994, P. N. Furbank, review of Madame du Deffand and Her World, pp. 18-23.

Publishers Weekly, September 26, 1994, review of Madame du Deffand and Her World, p. 46.

Times Literary Supplement, January 27, 1995, Stella Tillyard, review of Madame du Deffand and Her World, p. 29; February 15, 2002, John Rogister, review of La civiltà della conversazione, p. 30.