Ségur Sophie, comtesse de (1799–1874), French writer of children's books. The daughter of Count Rostopchine who served as minister during the reign of Tsar Paul I and as governor of the City of Moscow in 1812, she spent her childhood in Moscow and on the vast family estate in Voronono. In 1817 her father fell into disgrace, and the family went into exile to France. Two years later she married Count Eugène de Ségur, who soon preferred the glamour of Paris, while Sophie spent most of her time at Les Nouettes, the country estate in Normandy that would be the setting for most of the stories she wrote. Neglected by her husband, Ségur devoted herself entirely to the education of the couple's eight children. The countess was 58 years old when she launched her literary career. First, she wrote two fairy tales, ‘Histoire de Blondine’ and ‘Le bon petit Henri’, which were originally published in La Semaine des Enfants, a weekly magazine for children published by Louis Hachette, who eventually bought the copyrights to a manuscript that included three other tales: ‘Histoire de la Princesse Rosette’, ‘La Petite Souris grise’ (‘The Little Gray Mouse’) and ‘Ourson’. The five fairy tales appeared under the title Nouveaux Contes de fées (New Fairy Tales, 1857) with 20 illustrations by Gustave Doré. All the heroes in these tales, which combine an exuberant taste for the marvellous with a rigorous moral intention, are children who must overcome great difficulties and their human weaknesses to earn the happiness they will surely find at the end of their adventures. After the publication of Nouveaux Contes de fées, Ségur left behind the realm of fairy tales in favour of a different literary genre: the realistic novel for children, in which she gives an accurate rendition of French society during the Second Empire. The 20 novels she produced between 1857 and 1869 secured her a founding place in the tradition of French children's literature. The trilogy consisting of Les Malheurs de Sophie (The Misfortunes of Sophie), Les Petites Filles modèles (Model Little Girls) and Les Vacances (Vacation, 1859) is one of Ségur's most popular works, which still today find an enthusiastic audience among young readers. Legend once portrayed Ségur as a sweet grandmother writing stories for her grandchildren. Recent scholarship has shown, however, that she was a true novelist whose career was closely associated with the Hachette publishing house and the creation of the famous Bibliothèque Rose, a collection of books aimed at the largest possible children's audience.
Bibliography
- Doray, Marie‐France, ‘Cleanliness and Class in the Countess de Ségur's Novels’,
Children's Literature , 17 (1989). - ––La Comtesse de Ségur: une étrange paroissienne (1990).
- Kreyder, Laura, L'Enfance des saints et des autres. Essai sur la comtesse de Ségur (1987).
- Lastinger, Valérie, ‘Of Dolls and Girls in Nineteenth‐Century France’,
Children's Literature , 21 (1993). - Malarte‐Feldman, Claire‐Lise, ‘La Comtesse de Ségur: A Witness of Her Time’,
Children's Literature Association Quarterly , 20 (fall 1995).
— Claire‐Lise Malarte‐Feldman
