Her parents were Osip Ivanovich, an officer of the Russian army, friend and distant relative of Duke Richelieu, and Nadezhda Ivanovna Rosset (née Lorer).

Osip Ivanovich Rosset came from an old French family, was the commandant of the port of Odessa, and died during a plague epidemic in the city in 1814.

The children were given to their grandmother Ekaterina Evseevna Lorer (nee Tsitsianova ) in the estate of Gromakley near the city of Nikolaev for the remainder of their upbringing.

She was described as attractive, intelligent, with a “sharp tongue,” one of the Empress’s favorites, “on a short leg” with Nikolai Pavlovich and his brother Mikhail, Rosset nevertheless did not limit her interests to court life.

[4] The circle of admirers and friends of Alexandra Osipovna was made up of famous writers and poets: Pushkin, Vladimir Odoyevsky, Pyotr Vyazemsky, Zhukovsky and many others.

Some of us called the dark-skinned, southern, black-eyed girl Donna Sol - the main character of the Spanish drama Hugo .

Zhukovsky, who often likes to clothe poetic thought with a comic and aptly vulgar expression, nicknamed it "the heavenly devil."

On 11 January 1832 Alexandra married Nikolai Mikhailovich Smirnov (1807-1870), an official of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and owner of the Spasskoye estate near Moscow.

Her husband's career went well, in 1843 Smirnov became the master of ceremonies of the court, and the family (by this time, the couple already had three children) returned to St. Petersburg.

In Paris, she participated in the secular and cultural life of the "capital of the world", visited the salons of Adam Mickiewicz, and Sophie Swetchine.

Analysis of the text revealed significant anachronisms (for example, Pushkin discusses the novels by Dumas “The Three Musketeers ” and Stendhal's “ The Charterhouse of Parma”, written after his death) and the coincidence of some ideas with the diaries of the publisher of the notes - Rosset's daughter, Olga Nikolaevna Smirnova.