Jeanne Marie Le Prince de Beaumont (26 April 1711 – 8 September 1780) was a French novelist.

[edit] Life

She was born in Rouen and died in 1780. Her first marriage, in 1743, was annulled after two years. In 1746 she left France to become a governess in London.^[1] She was the author of Beauty and the Beast and Other Classic French Fairy Tales. After a successful publishing career in England, she remarried, bore many children, and left England to live the rest of her life in Savoy.

Her first work, the moralistic novel The Triumph of Truth (Le Triomphe de la Vérité) was published in 1748. She continued her literary career by publishing many school books. She then began to publish collections she called "magazines" of educational and moral stories and poems for children. She was one of the first to write fairy tales for children. J., The Great Fairy Tale Tradition: From Straparola and Basile to the Brothers Grimm. She also wrote other based on traditional fairy tale themes.

Another well-known storyteller of the era, Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve, wrote a story titled Beauty and the Beast. Le Prince de Beaumont considerably revised and abridged this story, and always included the revised version in the many "magazines" she published over the next 30 years. The success of this shorter revised version is why Le Prince de Beaumont is commonly deemed the author of the classic story.

[edit] Works

• Civan, roi de Bungo: Histoire japonnoise ou tableau de l'éducation d'un prince. 1998. ISBN 9782051016834. http://books.google.com/books?id=6XYk4V7geqAC&printsec=frontcover&dq=Jeanne-Marie+Leprince+de+Beaumont,&lr=&source=gbs_book_other_versions_r&cad=2#v=onepage&q=&f=false.  (1st edition 1758)
• Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont (2002). La Belle et la Bête. Illustrator Willi Glasauer. Gallimard Jeunesse. ISBN 9782070538812. 

[edit] References

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