Born: 1650 or 1651, France
Died: 4 January 1705
Country most active: France
Also known as: Marie-Catherine Le Jumel de Barneville, Baroness d’Aulnoy, Countess d’Aulnoy
Marie-Catherine Le Jumel de Barneville was a French writer known for her literary fairy tales and for coining the term when she called her works contes de fées (fairy tales). In 1666, she was married off at age 15 to a man three times her age, the Baron d’Aulnoy. In 1669, the Baron was accused of treason by two men who may have been the 19-year-old baroness’s lovers, and her mother, the Marchioness de Gadagne. The Baron spent three years in the Bastille before he finally convinced the court of his innocence. His two male accusers were executed and the Marchioness de Gadagne fled to England. Though a warrant was served for Madame d’Aulnoy’s arrest, she escaped through a window and hid in a church when officers came to arrest her.
She may have then worked as a spy for France (and possibly spent some time in Holland, Spain, and England) before returning to Paris in 1685 (possibly as repayment for spying). Madame d’Aulnoy hosted salons that were attended by leading aristocrats and princes.
In 1699, her friend Angélique Ticquet was beheaded for having a servant shoot Angélique’s abusive husband. The servant was hanged. Mme d’Aulnoy escaped prosecution despite her alleged involvement and removed herself from the Paris social scene for 20 years.
D’Aulnoy published 12 books, including two collections of fairy tales and three “historical” novels, as well as a series of travel memoirs based on her supposed travels through court life in Madrid and London. Though her stories may have been plagiarized and invented, these stories later became her most popular works. In France and England at the time her works were considered as mere entertainment rather than factual history, a sentiment reflected in the reviews of the period. Her truly accurate attempts at historical accounts – about the Dutch wars of Louis XIV – were less successful. The money she made from her writing helped support her three daughters, not all of whom were produced during her time with the Baron d’Aulnoy .
Her most popular works were the fairy tales and adventure stories she published in Les Contes des Fées (Tales of fairies) and Contes Nouveaux, ou Les Fées à la Mode. Unlike the folk tales of the Grimm Brothers (born some 135 years later than d’Aulnoy), she wrote her stories in a conversational tone, as they might be told in salons. Many of her stories created a world of animal brides and grooms, where love and happiness came to heroines after overcoming great obstacles, though many English adaptations are very different from the original.