Marie le Jars de Gournay (1565-1645) was one of Renaissance France's most active literary figures. She served as the posthumous editor for the works of famed essayist Michel de Montaigne, and in her own writings espoused a strongly feminist point of view that made her a woman far ahead of her time. A generation after her death, de Gournay was honored as one of the seventy most famous women of all time by Jean de la Forge in the 1663 volume Circle of Learned Women.

Barred from School

De Gournay was born on October 6, 1565, in Paris, where her father Guillaume enjoyed royal patronage as an officeholder during the reigns of Charles IX and Henry III. She was the first of six children in her family, and when she was three years old, her father acquired an estate in Picardy, a region in northern France. The property, Gournay-sur-Aronde, also gave...