RICCOBONI Madame (1714-1792), whose maiden name was Marie Jeanne Laboras de Mézières, and who married and was deserted by an actor and author of little merit, was born at Paris in 1714. She herself was an actress, but did not succeed on the stage. She then took to novel writing and deserves a considerable place in the history of the sentimental novel. Her first work was the remarkable Histoire du Marquis de Cressy (1758). This was followed by Milady Catesby, Fanny Butler (both of them, as indeed are almost all her books, in letter form), Ernestine (sometimes thought her masterpiece), three series of Lettres in the names of Adelaide de Dammartin (often quoted as Madame de Sancerre), Elizabeth Sophie de Valliere, Milord Rivers, and others. These books were much admired, but brought their author little money. She obtained, however, a small pension from the crown, but the Revolution deprived her of it, and she died in 1792 in great indigence. Besides the works named she translated Fielding’s Amelia, and tried a continuation (but not the conclusion sometimes erroneously ascribed to her) of Marivaux’s unfinished Marianne.

All Madame Rieeoboni’s work is very clever, and there is real pathos in it. But it is among the most eminent examples of the “sensibility” novel, of which no examples but Sterne’s have kept their place in England, and that not in virtue of their sensibility. A still nearer parallel may be found in the work of Mackenzie. Madame Riccoboni is an especial offender in the use of mechanical aids to impressiveness—italics, dashes, rows of points, and the like. The principal edition of her complete works is that of Paris, 1818. The chief novels appear in a volume of Garnier’s Bibliothèque Amusante, Paris, 1865.