In "Une lettre de femme" Marceline Desbordes-Valmore observes, "Les femmes, je le sais, ne doivent pas écrire; J'écris pourtant" (Women are not supposed to write; yet I write). Poetry in nineteenth-century France was a genre written by and for men, and only a handful of female poets published under their own names. Nevertheless, in addition to being a mother and having a long career as an opera singer and actress, Desbordes-Valmore not only authored three novels and fifty stories but also published more than six hundred poems. She gained the admiration and praise of her peers, including Victor Hugo, Charles Baudelaire, Charles-Augustin Sainte-Beuve, and Honoré de Balzac. Alfred de Vigny referred to her as "le plus grand esprit féminin de notre temps" (the greatest feminine spirit of our time). Desbordes-Valmore was the earliest of the French Romantic poets, having published Elé...