Genlis, Stéphanie-Félicité du Crest, Madame de (1746-1830). French educationalist, novelist, and memoir-writer. She was briefly the mistress of the duc de Chartres and thereafter governess to his children, but her constitutionalist politics lost her the favour of the European courts, which she had won by her works on education (Adèle et Théodore ou Lettres sur l'éducation, 1782) and her stories and plays for children (Les Veillées du château, 1784; Théâtre à l'usage des jeunes personnes, 1779-80). In exile she turned to rewriting history in the form of memoirs and popular historical novels, and continued with both after her return to France in 1800 (e.g. Mademoiselle de la Fayette, 1813; Les Parvenus, 1824; Mémoires inédits sur le XVIIIe siècle et la révolution française, 1825-8).
[Jennifer Birkett]
