SOURCE: "Isabelle de Charrière Publishes Caliste" in A History of New French Literature, edited by Denis Hollier, Harvard University Press, 1989, pp. 553-7.

In the essay below, Stewart lauds Charrière 's form and style, and observes specifically that her novel Caliste "glosses the most urgent concerns of the female novel of the late 18th century."

The 18th century—and especially its last few decades—saw the publication of a surprising number of novels by women, most of which have been excluded from the canon. Although students of French literature can usually identify Marie-Madeleine de La Fayette, who wrote in the 17th century, and Germaine de Staël and George Sand, who wrote in the 19th, few have heard of 18th-century writers such as Françoise de Graffigny, Marie-Jeanne Riccoboni, Marie Leprince de Beaumont, or Anne-Louise Elie de Beaumont. Whereas Staël, by the force of her personality...