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( Stéphanie Félicité Ducrest de St-Albin, comtesse de Genlis)
Medieval
16th century&_160;· 17th century
18th century&_160;· 19th century
20th century&_160;· Contemporary Madame de Genlis was born of a noble but impoverished Burgundian family, at Champcéry, near Autun. When six years of age she was received as a canoness into the noble chapter of Alix near Lyon, with the title of Madame la Comtesse de Lancy, taken from the town of Bourbon-Lancy. Her entire education, however, was conducted at home. In 1758, in Paris, her skill as a harpist and her vivacious wit speedily attracted admiration. In her sixteenth year she was married to Charles-Alexis Brûlart de Genlis, a colonel of grenadiers, who afterwards became Marquis de Sillery and de Genlis, but this was not allowed to interfere with her determination to remedy her incomplete education, and to satisfy a taste for acquiring and imparting knowledge. Some years later, through the influence of her aunt, Charlotte-Jeanne Béraud de la Haye de Riou, marquise de Montesson, who had been clandestinely married to the Louis Philippe I, Duke of Orléans, she entered the Palais Royal as a lady-in-waiting to their daughter-in-law Louise Marie Adélaïde de Bourbon-Penthièvre, Duchess of Chartres as the wife of their heir Louis Philippe II, Duke of Chartres. She acted with great energy and zeal as governess to the daughters of the family, and was in 1781 appointed by the duke of Chartres to the responsible office of gouverneur of his sons, a bold step which led to the resignation of all the tutors as well as to much social scandal, though there is no reason to suppose that the intellectual interests of her pupils suffered on that account. The better to carry out her ingenious theories of education, she wrote several works for their use, the best known of which are the Théâtre d'éducation (4 vols., 1779-1780), a collection of short comedies for young people, Les Annales de la vertu (2 vols., 1781) and Adèle et Théodore (3 vols., 1782). Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve tells how she anticipated many modern methods of teaching. History was taught with the help of magic lantern slides and her pupils learnt botany from a practical botanist during their walks.
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