Sophie Ristaud Cottin

Sophie Cottin (22 March 1770 – 25 August 1807) was a French writer whose novels were popular in the 19th century, and were translated into several different languages.

Marie Sophie Ristaud (sometimes spelt Risteau) was born in March 1770 at Tonneins. She was not yet twenty when she married her first husband, Jean-Paul-Marie Cottin, a banker. She wrote several romantic and historical novels including Elizabeth; or, the Exiles of Siberia (Elisabeth ou les Exilés de Sibérie 1806), a "wildly romantic but irreproachably moral tale", according to Nuttall's Encyclopaedia. She also published Claire d'Albe (1799), Malvina (1801), Amélie de Mansfield (1803), Mathilde (1805), set in the crusades, and a prose-poem, La Prise de Jéricho. Her writing became more important to her after her first husband died when she was in her early twenties. She went to live with a cousin and her three children at Champlan (Seine-et-Oise) but died at the age of 37 in Paris on 25 August 1807.^[1]

• Claire d'Albe (1799)
• Malvina (1800)
• Amélie Mansfield (1802)
  • English translation : Amelia Mansfield : a novel (1809)^[2]
• Mathilde (1805)
• Élisabeth ou Les exilés de Sibérie (1806)

•  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Cottin, Marie". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 7 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.
• Wood, James, ed. (1907). "Cottin, Sophie" . The Nuttall Encyclopædia. London and New York: Frederick Warne.
• Silvia Lorusso, Le Charme sans la beauté, vie de Sophie Cottin, Paris, Classiques Garnier, 2018. ISBN 978-2-406-08007-7
• Silvia Lorusso, Comment s’affranchir de la passion. Le pouvoir de la religion dans les derniers romans de Sophie Cottin, in F. Bercegol et M. Gardini (dir.), Littérature et religion, in « Cahiers de littérature française », n. 21, 2022, p. 29-40. ISSN 1971-4882 ; ISBN 9-782406-144526
• Silvia Lorusso, Sophie Cottin et la religion, in « Orages », n. 20, 2022, p. 171-181. ISSN 1635-5202
• Silvia Lorusso, Madame Cottin face à Madame de Staël, in F. Bercegol et C. Klettke (dir.), Les femmes en mouvement – L’univers sentimental et intellectuel des romancières du début du XIXe siècle, Berlin, Frank & Timme, 2017, p. 73-87. ISBN 978-3-7329-0322-1
• Silvia Lorusso, Sophie Cottin et « le triste honneur de former une nouvelle école de romanciers », in F. Bercegol, S. Genand et F. Lotterie (dir.), Une « période sans nom ». Les années 1780-1820 et la fabrique de l’histoire littéraire, Classiques Garnier, Paris 2016, p. 205-222. ISBN 978-2-406-05998-1
• Silvia Lorusso, Lettre inédite de Madame Cottin sur la loi du divorce, in « Revue italienne d’études françaises », [Online], n. 1, 2011. ISSN 2240-7456

• Works by Madame Cottin at Project Gutenberg
• Works by or about Sophie Ristaud Cottin at the Internet Archive
• Introduction to Amélie Mansfield
• Cottin's life and works (in French)