Élisa Mercœur (24 June 1809 in Saint-Sébastien-sur-Loire, 7 January 1835 in Paris) was a French writer, poet and essayist[2] and was one of the most prominent names in Breton Romanticism.

[5] After Mercœur's death in 1835, her mother posthumously edited her work to ensure it survived for posterity[5] and in the process constructed much of her modern image as a virginal child prodigy.

[4] According to Wendy Greenberg, "her notoriety was based on an apparent acceptance of dominant views concerning femininity and shows clear engagement with the model of masculine genius and voice".

On 21 April 1811, as she had wished, her mother, Adélaïde Aumand, took Élisa back from the orphanage; in the Memoirs, this event appears as "she was twenty-one months old when I was left alone to raise her".

At twelve years old, Mercœur gave her young companions lessons in history, geography, writing, English and French.

[12] The first time that Mercœur had the opportunity to reveal her literary talent to the public was the day of the debut, on the theatre of Nantes, of a famous singer.

The next day, the whole town applauded this poetic essay published by an unofficial friend in the newspaper Le Lycée Armoricain.

[a] Camille Mélinet agreed to print her first poem "Dors, mon Ami"[3] that would be part of the volume of verses "Poesies", in the "Journal de Nantes".

[15] Due to the quality of her work, Mélinet took an interest in Mercœur and offered her a contract to print further pieces on a monthly basis in the Lycée Armoricain, a newspaper that appeared between 1823 and 1831,[3] and was distributed to cities all over France.

[16] At the end of 1825, Mélinet encouraged Mercœur to compete for the prizes being awarded by the Academic Society of Nantes and Loire-Atlantique [fr] in both the years of 1825 and 1826.

[3] After a year of publishing poems, Mercœur was so widely known that she was elected as a corresponding member to the Academy of Lyon in October 1826.

The historian Alphonse Rastoul describes the "vague and dreamy" nature of Mercœur's work that compares favourably with the English poets of the time.

[3] The eagle replied to the shy bird, which he could not offer any shelter to anyone, in the form of a letter that was reproduced in the Nantes press on 18 July 1827.

He described Mercœur as a "women of letters" who has attained "a complete emancipation", and has succeeded in abolishing "the dividing line that had separated the sexes".

[18] While Mercœur was holding a poetry reading in the prefecture of Nantes one evening, thieves broke into her house and stole a sum of money, given to her by the Duchess of Berry.

Her embarrassment at the loss of money, along with a marriage proposal from an older man, gave rise to the appearance of impropriety and rumours of immorality.

[3] In January 1829, Mercœur received a bonus from the Ministry of the Interior and an annual pension of 300 francs, granted from the funds of the master's office of the Maison du Roi.

This pension was increased almost immediately to 1,200 francs by M. de Martignac – a minister to whom she had sent a piece entitled "La Gloire" and had received a kind letter in return.

In a passage from her poems, she complains, among other things, that she was obliged to do 'this horrible trade of selling her prose and verse to booksellers at so much a sheet', and that she could not indulge in the selfless worship of poetry.

On 3 May 1831[b] and thanks to her powerful patrons, Mercœur managed to get the play read before the committee of the Comédie-Française, in front of Claude Louis Séraphin Barizain, Jean-Bernard Brissebarre [fr], Granville and Taylor.

[21] The next day, she learned that Boabdil was accepted by the actors, but rejected by Baron Taylor, who found the play very well done, but could not, he said, hope to attract the Parisian public and interest them in the story of a King of Granada.

From that day forward her strength waned and she ended up falling quite ill. Apart from the production of the few last poems dedicated to Louis Philippe I and his ministers, she stopped producing poetry entirely.

[3] The book was to be titled "Quatre amours" ("Four loves") and had been announced in the Revue de Paris in February 1833, but she never managed to write.

[3] Becoming ever more aware of the gender-specific issues of her sex and the demands on her as a poet, she published a poem in the Journal des femmes[22] where she attacked men who abuse women and are not sanctioned by society.

[c][25] The representation of genius during her life was limited to the male personality and was particularly harmful to women who were generally excluded from male-dominated society.

Mercceur's literary criticism is notable not only for its feminist perspective, but also for its focus on the social and political context in which literature is produced and consumed.

[25] In summary, Mercceur's concept of genius is related to the idea of spiritual advancement or progress, and she sees herself as part of a universal picture of heroes and poets who have led humanity forward.