Jeanne Julie Éléonore de Lespinasse

[1][2] Her mother, who was married to the Comte d'Albon, separated from her husband at the time of her birth, and the baby was baptized as the daughter of two fictitious persons, 'Claude Lespinasse' and his wife 'Julie Navarre'.

[2] The mathematician and writer Jean le Rond d'Alembert became a close friend, joined her new salon, and eventually came to live in her house, although they were not romantically involved.

[1] Although she had neither wealth nor rank and was not an outstanding beauty, Mlle de Lespinasse had intellect, charm, and ability as a hostess, qualities that made her salon gatherings the most popular in Paris.

Other writers, focusing on her theme of passionate love rather than on genre, place her work alongside that of novelists such as Abbé Prévost and Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

Less dispassionately philosophical than those by such later eighteenth century letter writers as Madame de Stael, they offer a portrait of someone who saw herself as a tragic heroine sacrificing all for love.

[citation needed] By early 1776, Mlle de Lespinasse was in a state of mental and physical collapse, apparently caused by the misery of her relationship with Guibert.

[citation needed] Julie Le Breton, a protagonist in Mary Augusta Ward's novel Lady Rose's Daughter is said to owe something to the character of Mlle de Lespinasse.

[citation needed] The novelist Naomi Royde-Smith wrote a well-received biography, The Double Heart: A Study of Julie de Lespinasse (1931).