Anne Larsen, professor of French at Hope College, has had published a second volume of the collected works of Madeleine and Catherine des Roches, a mother and daughter who headed a celebrated literary salon in Poitiers, France, during the 16th century.
The 420-page "Les Secondes ouvres" (New Works),
published in French in October by the Librairie Droz of
Geneva Switzerland, constitutes the second phase of Larsen's
effort to publish the authors' complete works. According to
Larsen, the works were previously accessible only to
specialized readers working in research archives.
Madeleine and Catherine des Roches wrote poetry,
dialogues and drama, and were the first women in France to
publish their private letters. The first two volumes
appeared in 1578 and 1583, and their correspondence was
published in 1586, a year before their death of the plague.
Larsen's edition was funded by a Hope
Collaborative Student/Faculty Research Grant, a year-long
fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities
and a sabbatical leave which she spent as a "Visiting
Scholar" at Harvard University.
The first of Larsen's three volumes was published
by Librairie Droz in June of 1993. Her critical edition of
the last volume of works by Madeleine and Catherine des
Roches is forthcoming in the spring of 1999.
She is currently working on a critical edition of
the French letters of Anna Maria van Schurman, a Dutch 17th
century scholar.