Amelie Suard was a French writer and salonniere. Her letters provided a valuable source of information on life in France before the French Revolution of 1789. Take a look below for 21 more awesome and interesting facts about Amelie Suard.

1. Panckoucke was born on May 12, 1743.

2. Her parents, the author and bookseller André-Joseph Panckoucke (1703–53) and Marie–Marguerite Gandouin, married on 12 February 1730.

3. She was one of 15 children, including the writer and publisher Charles-Joseph Panckoucke (1736–98).

4. Amélie married Jean Baptiste Antoine Suard (c. 1733–1817) on 17 January 1766. They had only one child, a daughter who died very young.

5. J. B. A. Suard was a journalist who translated many English works into French.

6. He was a minor philosopher who took his ideas from Marie Thérèse Rodet Geoffrin’s salon.

7. Amélie Suard began to visit the salons in the 1760s, where she was to be a leading figure for the remainder of the Ancien Régime.

8. She was one of the better writers of the period, and her letters have great value as sources of information on the period.

9. Madame Geoffrin disapproved of Suard’s imprudent marriage since Amélie did not bring a significant dowry and Suard had only a small income.

10. Amélie managed to charm Madame Geoffrin, who supported the Suard’s petite ménage from then on.

11. In June 1775, her brother took Amélie to Ferney to visit Voltaire, then aged 77, a philosopher whom they both greatly admired.

12. She was not disappointed, and described the meeting in a series of letters to her husband that combine trivial observations of Voltaire’s appearance and habits with philosophical thoughts.

13. For almost two decades Amélie was the closest female friend of the Marquis de Condorcet.

14. Amélie and her husband became close friends of Jacques Antoine Hippolyte, Comte de Guibert when he began to frequent Necker’s salon in the 1770s.

15. During the worst days of the French Revolution the Suards retired to a small house they owned at Fontenai.

16. After Madame de Staël warned her father that it was dangerous for him to shelter proscribed people J. B. A. Suard went into exile in Switzerland and Germany for three years, while Amélie stayed with friends near Paris.

17. Although Amélie’s letters were often sentimental, her actions were usually pragmatic and in her own interests.

18. Her husband was lazy, and she had to struggle to advance his career.

19. While he was in exile she kept the newspaper he edited running.

20. In 1799 she joined her husband in Frankfurt, and the two moved to Ansbach where they lived among a small colony of exiles for a year.

21. J. B. A. Suard died in 1817. Amélie worked on compiling his memoirs. Amélie Suard died in 1830.