Clémence Robert (1797–1872)

Antoinette-Henriette-Clémence Robert, who used the pen name Clémence Robert, was born in Mâcon, France, the daughter of Jean-François Robert, a deputy civil court judge, and his wife Claudine Henriette Loubat de Bohan. Her older brother Henri Robert became a famous clock, chronometer, and watchmaker associated with Breguet in Paris, and the author of numerous specialist publications. She was an eager reader and strong student with a penchant for history. In 1827, after the death of her father, she and her mother went to live in Paris to be closer to her brother. In her early days there, she assisted her brother's friend Achille de Jouffroy in writing a history of France. She also wrote poems that were published in various periodicals, notably La Sylphide and the Journal des Femmes. She attended the literary salon hosted by François-René de Chateaubriand and Juliette Récamier, who became friends. At the urging of her friend Amable Tastu, she decided to try her hand at writing historical novels, and had success with L'Abbé Olivier (1839), her second book. She went on to write some 100 novels in this genre, which were were serialized in a dozen leading publications, making her nearly as popular as Alexandre Dumas and Eugène Sue. She also wrote plays, although none that equaled the popularity of her novels. With Camille Leynadier, she compiled and edited the memoirs of Giuseppe Garibaldi, dramatized in parts, published in 1860 as Mémoires authentiques sur Garibaldi mis en ordre.