Stéphanie Félicité Ducrest du Saint Aubin, Comtesse de Genlis (1746-1830) was the daughter of an impoverished French aristocrat. She received no formal education but read widely in her father’s library and became an accomplished performer on the harp. At the age of sixteen, she married Charles-Alexis, Comte de Genlis, and gave birth to two daughters and a son who died of measles at the age of five. Her aunt introduced her to Parisian society, and at the age of twenty-five she became lady-in-waiting to the Duchess of Chartres and mistress of her husband, Louis-Philippe, later to become Duc d’Orléans. Society was scandalised when the Duke put his mistress in charge of the education of his children, but henceforth her vocation was to be a teacher and educator: apart from the Duke’s children and her own, she ultimately adopted and educated nineteen others. During the French Revolution, the Duke participated in the National Assembly and took the name Philippe-Égalité, but both he and her husband (who had become the Marquis de Sillery) were executed during the Terror. Stéphanie fled into exile but returned to Paris in 1800 and made her peace with both Napoleon and the restored Louis XVIII. She continued to quarrel in print with her many literary enemies until her death at the age of eighty-eight, shortly after her former pupil, Louis-Philippe, became King of France. Genlis was a prolific writer in many different genres. Her most celebrated works were Adèle & Théodore and Les Veillées du Château (Tales of the Castle), improving works for children. Despite the misadventures of her youth, her themes were always religious and moralistic, and she was a violent opponent of the rationalist philosophes. In 1785 and 1788, Genlis visited England with her pupil Adélaïde d’Orléans, and was fêted by English society, who were familiar with her moralistic writings. She was even given an audience with Queen Charlotte. When she returned in 1791, however, her reception was much cooler, since news of her former status as the Duke’s mistress had reached England, and her association with the Orleanist faction made her suspect to English high society, alarmed to see the French king a prisoner in his own capital.