Marie Thérèse Rodet Geoffrin

Marie Thérèse Geoffrin born Rodet ( born June 2, 1699 Paris, † October 6, 1777 ibid ), known as Madame Geoffrin, was an author and Salonnière the Enlightenment. It is regarded as one of the wittiest women of the 18th century.

Life and work

Geoffrin was the daughter of a valet of the Dauphin and 1714 married 15 years with Pierre François Geoffrin; a rich lieutenant colonel in the civil militia lieutenant colonel - de la Milice de Paris. After she became a widow after only a few years, her home was well patronized to the salon in which perverted the enlightened of her time. Foremost among these are, inter alia, Jean -François Marmontel, Charles de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu, André Morellet, Antoine Léonard Thomas (1732-1785) and Stanislaus Poniatowski, the last king of Poland later, Stanislaus II

From 1749 to 1777 she organized in her home at the Hôtel de la rue Saint- Honoré, a salon twice a week, she invited artists, scholars, writers and philosophers such as Denis Diderot, Voltaire or D'Alembert one.

At the invitation of the Polish king Stanisław August Poniatowski, who for years cultivated a friendly relationship with her, she went to Warsaw in 1766. On the stopover in Vienna, she was greeted by Maria Theresa and Joseph II.

Your support of the encyclopedist and their commitment to the freedom significantly contributed to the fact that the pressure of the Encyclopédie was made possible in spite of censorship in France. Together wrote D' Alembert, Morellet Thomas and the eulogy " Eloges de Madame G. " Your treatise " Sur la conversation" ( About the witty Entertainment ) and their correspondence with famous personalities of the Enlightenment " Lettres " issued by Morellet.