Marie-Jeanne Roland (1754-1793) was a French writer and political figure, who presided over a salon and was influential in her husband's career during the early years of the French Revolution until she was arrested and executed for treason.

Marie-Jeanne "Manon" Philipon, better known as Madame Roland, was born in Paris sometime in 1754. The only surviving child of a master engraver, she was born into an age of reason and wit, the France of the philosophes. After spending the first two years of her life with a wet-nurse, Manon returned to her parents' middle-class household where she watched her father and his apprentices make decorated snuffboxes, jewel and watch cases, elaborate buttons, and picture frames. Taught to read at an early age, her intellectual curiosity was insatiable. She devoured books on virtually every subject including history, philosophy, poetry, mathematics, and religious works. From her mother, she learned the domestic...