Madeleine de Scudéry

Madeleine de Scudéry held a prominent position in the seventeenth-century Parisian literary world. A frequent attendee of the illustrious Rambouillet salon, de Scudéry formed her own salon, called the Société du Samedi, or the Saturday Club, which came to prominence and then surpassed Rambouillet’s during the 1640s. She was a novelist, but often published anonymously or under her brother’s name. Her novels were long (up to ten volumes in length) and often used historical settings to convey information about seventeenth-century French society. Her books include Artamène, ou, Le grand Cyrus (1649–53) and Clélie, histoire romaine (1654–60).