Caroline-Stéphanie-Félicité, Madame de Genlis (25 January 1746 – 31 December 1830) was a French writer of the late 18th and early 19th century, known for her novels and theories of children's education.

Pierre César was captured by the English while returning from Santo Domingo in 1760 and one of his fellow prisoners was Charles-Alexis Brûlart, Comte de Genlis (1737–1793), whom he introduced to his daughter after their release.

This was in line with her theory of educating her pupils with children of different nationalities to better learn foreign languages; the household already contained English and Italian servants.

[10] In 1781, Chartres took the then unusual step of putting her in charge of his sons' education, which led to the resignation of their existing tutors; she and Charles-Alexis formally separated the following year.

This developed her approach to education, later set out in Théâtre d'éducation (4 vols., 1779–1780), a collection of short comedies for young people, Les Annales de la vertu (2 vols., 1781) and Adèle et Théodore (3 vols., 1782).

Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve claims she anticipated many modern methods of teaching; history was taught using magic lantern slides and her pupils learnt botany from a botanist during their walks.

Her aunt was a close friend of Napoleon's wife Joséphine de Beauharnais and this connection resulted in her being given rooms at the Arsenal and a small pension.

[11] Her later years were occupied with literary quarrels, notably those arising from her 1822 publication Diners du Baron d'Holbach, which attacked what she viewed as 'the intolerance, fanaticism, and eccentricities of the philosophes of the 18th century.'

[11] The vast majority of her works are now little read but provide interesting historical background, especially Mémoires inédits sur le XVIII' siècle, published in 1825.

[22] British women writers of the late eighteenth century were particularly inspired by Genlis's novel of education Adèle et Théodore, which Anna Letitia Barbauld compared to Rousseau's Emile as a type of "preceptive fiction.

As Donelle Ruwe notes, Genlis's emphasis on the mother as a powerful educating heroine was inspirational, but so too were her books' demonstrations of how to create homemade literacy objects such as flash cards and other teaching aids.

She is also mentioned in War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy, Our Village by Mary Russell Mitford, Oblomov by Ivan Goncharov, humourist story M-me Genlis's spirit by Nikolai Leskov, The Angel in the House by Coventry Patmore, The Rector of Justin by Louis Auchincloss, Nausea by Jean-Paul Sartre, Emma by Jane Austen, and A Place of Greater Safety by Hilary Mantel.