Henriette-Julie de Murat

[1] She was one of the leaders of the fairy tale vogue, along with Marie Catherine d'Aulnoy, Charlotte-Rose de Caumont La Force, Marie-Jeanne L'Héritier, and Charles Perrault.

[1] Murat claimed that they were all drawing on Straparola’s classically-inspired stories (particularly ‘The Savage’, ‘The Pig King’, and ‘The Turbot’), but she was probably also inspired by French medieval legends and Breton folktales.

[11][12] That same year Murat was elected to the Accademia degli Ricovrati (Academy of the Sheltered) of Padua, along with de La Force and Bernard, joining the salon hostesses d’Aulnoy, L’Heritier, Scudery and Antoinette Deshoulieres.

[13] ‘The crimes that are attributed to Madame de Murat are not of a kind to be easily proven by way of information, because they deal with domestic impiety and a monstrous attachment to people of her own sex.

That woman, who is housed by [Murat] is the object of her perpetual adorations even in the presence of some valets and pawnbrokers.’[14][15]She was estranged from her husband and disinherited by her mother, which forced her to stop publishing.

[1][16][17] Her friend Mme Parbere, the Countess d’Argenton, mistress of the Duc d’Orleans, negotiated her freedom in 1709 on condition that Murat remain with her aunt, Mademoiselle de Dampierre, in Limousin.

[1] She was not allowed to return to Paris until the death of Louis XIV in 1715 but by that time she was so sick with arthritis and dropsy that she retired to her grandmother’s castle in Maine.