Volume 39, Number 21 · December 17, 1992
Conqueror of Paris
By Benedetta Craveri, Translated from the Italian by Patrick Creagh
A Woman, a Man, and Two Kingdoms: The Story of Madame d'Epinay and the Abbæ Galiani
by Francis Steegmuller
Knopf, 280 pp., $23.00
Ferdinando Galiani, Louise d'Epinay Correspondance Vol. I (1769–1770)
by (The Correspondance will comprise five volumes to appear annually.), edited by Georges Dulac, by Daniel Maggetti
Les Editions Desjonquères, 327 pp., FF 140.00
Eagle in a Gauze Cage: Louise d'Epinay, femme de lettres
by Ruth Plaut Weinreb
AMS Press, 192 pp., $42.50
In 1766 the Paris of the Enlightenment welcomed the Milanese political philosopher Cesare Beccaria with both reverence and curiosity. All the philosophes were anxious to meet the author of Of Crimes and Punishments (1764), his celebrated treatise on judicial law that condemned torture and the death penalty. All the same, when invited to lunch by Madame Geoffrin, whose salon was considered 'the headquarters of the Encyclopédie,' Beccaria found that another Italian (or rather, Neapolitan) guest was the center of attention and monopolized the conversation. And the same thing was to happen on subsequent occasions. 'Whatever company we frequented,' wrote Pietro Verri to his brother Alessandro, 'Galiani was there too, and wherever he is everyone keeps mum and leaves him to shine, because this abbé has a hundred wisecracks to not even the fourth part of a heart. He's all the rage in Paris, much sought-after, everybody knows him…and everyone's mad about him.'[1]
Review, 6694 words
To read the full text of this piece, please choose one of the following options:
|
If you are already a subscriber to the Review's electronic edition, please sign in: |
To subscribe to the electronic edition, please press the button below. |
To purchase access to this article for $3, please press the button below. |