LA DAME d'ESPRIT A Biography of the Marquise Du Chatelet by Judith P. Zinsser

I discovered the marquise Du Châtelet by accident, browsing through the second hand books at a New York City Salvation Army store. I was then writing her last chapter of: A History of Their Own, the narrative of European women’s history, which I coauthored with Bonnie S. Anderson. The desire to research the life of the marquise then led me on a wonderful series of journeys, a fellowship at Cambridge University, a scholar’s retreat in the south of France, and two-weeks in Voltaire’s Library in Russia. I sat each day at the St. Petersburg Voltaire collection calling up books that Du Châtelet herself had read and annotated. I felt the same excitement in Paris and New York holding her letters, and deciphering the many changes she made to her manuscripts. Only in the midst of her research did I realize that I was working on the same woman that my aunt had been studying just before her death. It is as if Du Châtelet had challenged both of us to tell her life in new ways that would gain the marquise the learned reputation she so rightly deserves.

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