Skip to content Skip to navigation

Reading The Adventures of Mademoiselle de Richelieu (Part 3)


Full citation: 

Erskine. 1744. The travels and adventures of Mademoiselle de Richelieu : cousin to the present Duke ... who made the tour of Europe, dressed in men's cloaths ... Done into English from the lady's own manuscript, by the translator of the Memoirs and adventures of the Marques of Bretagne. Dublin, Oli. Nelson.

Publication summary: 

This is a light-hearted stream-of-consciousness summary of my read-through of this 18th century novel. Parts of it are extracted from Twitter conversations.

Part 3

* * *

This summary is assembled from a Twitter conversation

Me: Our 2 heroines having considered marriage (w Alithea in male disguise) as a way to spend their lives together, and considered the hazards of discovery daunting, Arabella is making arrangements to join Alithea on her travels also in male disguise. Alithea amuses herself by taunting Arabella's suitors. But then Alithea is persuaded to contribute to a kickstarter for some dude's treatise on moral philosophy and yields to the impulse to summarize its contents for 20 pages or so.

hawkwing_lb: Ah, moral philosophy. So very exciting! And probably illegal! ;)

Me: Don't know about illegal, but very tedious. I'm wondering if I can turn the digressions into a running gag rather than silently excising them. The content if the digressions must be excised, of course. But the frame? Might be able to do something. I think my re-write will come off best with a touch of farce.

hawkwing_lb: I remember being very thrilled when I read THE FORBIDDEN BESTSELLERS OF REVOLUTIONARY FRANCE.

Me: There could be an entire genre to be resurrected here!

hawkwing_lb: Or Pre-Revolutionary France? Title like that. Anyway. And discovering that philosophy and pornography went together.

Me: I don't think I can manage porn, but I think Mlle de Richelieu might convince me to try my hand at erotic romance after all.

hawkwing_lb: I encourage this potential direction.

Time period: 
Place: 

Add new comment

historical