Delphine de Girardin

Delphine de Girardin (24 January 1804 – 29 June 1855), pen name Vicomte Delaunay, was a French writer.

Her mother, the well-known Madame Sophie Gay, brought her up in the midst of a brilliant literary society.

A visit to Italy in 1827, during which she was enthusiastically welcomed by the literati of Rome and even crowned in the capitol, produced various poems, of which the most ambitious was Napoline (1833).

The contemporary sketches that she contributed from 1836 to 1839 to the La Presse, under the pen name of Charles de Launay, were collected under the title Lettres parisiennes (1843), and obtained a brilliant success.

Contes d'une vieille fille a ses neveux (1832), La Canne de Monsieur de Balzac (1836) and Il ne faut pas jouer avec la douleur (1853) are among the best-known of her romances; and her dramatic pieces in prose and verse include L'École des journalistes (1840), Judith (1843), Cléopâtre (1847), Lady Tartuffe (1853), and the one-act comedies, C'est la faute du mari (1851), La Joie fait peur (1854), Le Chapeau d'un horloger (1854) and Une Femme qui deteste son mari, which did not appear till after the author's death, which occurred in Paris.