Louise Tardieu d' Esclavelles marchioness of Live d' Epinay. French woman of letters. She left a fictionalized autobiography, Histoire of Mrs. de Montbrillant, and an abundant correspondence. Friend of the baron de Grimm, Diderot and the encyclopedists.
Louis Dupin de Francueil introduces Rousseau around 1747 at this woman of letters, wife of farmer-general, who will become his protective. At the end of 1755, it offers to him hospitality at the Hermitage, small house depending on its field of the Kids, close to Morello cherry, where Rousseau settles in April 1756. The real friendship which them dregs prevents the writer, the first year, to feel the “yoke” of its protective. But their relations are spoiled during the summer 1757 and this discomfort leads in December to a final rupture. Rousseau leaves the Hermitage and they will never be re-examined again.
In 1771, Mrs. d' Epinay makes prohibit the readings of the Confessions in the living rooms, and takes again the drafting of her pseudo-memories, the History of Mrs. de Montbrillant. With the assistance of Diderot and Grimm, it brings there important rehandlings, which primarily aim blackening the character of “Rene” (Rousseau) and at transforming the work into “against-Confessions”. These “memories”, which are its principal literary work, will be worth to him, with their publication (1818), a posthumous celebrity.