GENLIS, Stéphanie-FélicitéDuckest de Saint-Aubin, Comtesse de (1746-1830), a voluminous French writer, was born of a noble but impoverished Burgundian family, at the Château de Champcery, near Autun, on the 25th of January 1746. When six years of age, she was received as a canoness into the noble chapter of Alix, near Lyons, with the title of Madame la Comtesse de Laney, taken from the town of Bourbon-Laney, of which her father was at that time superior. Her entire education, however, was conducted at home under the eye of her mother by an accomplished governess. In 1758 she removed along with her mother to Paris, where her skill in music and her vivacious wit speedily attracted attention and admiration. Her marriage with the Comte de Genlis, a colonel of grenadiers, who afterwards became marquis of Sillery, took place in her sixteenth year, but was not suffered to interfere with a rapidly developing taste for acquiring and imparting knowledge. Some years later, through the influence of her aunt, Madame de Montesson, who had been clandestinely married to the duke of Orleans, she entered the Palais Royal as lady-in-waiting to the duchess of Chartres (1770); and, after having acted with great energy and zeal as governess to the daughters of the family, she was in 1781 appointed by the duke to the responsible office of “gouverneur” of his sons, a bold step which, though it led to the resignation of all the tutors as well as to much social scandal, can hardly in fairness be held to have seriously prejudiced the intellectual interests at least of those committed to her charge. The better to carry out her theory of education, she wrote several works for the use of her royal pupils, the best known of which are the Théâtre <Γ Éducation (1779-80), a collection of ...