"A historical figure who has long fascinated audiences, Hortense Mancini has been subject to caricature and sensationalist coverage by her contemporaries and also by subsequent historians and biographers. Nicholson’s serious account of her life and works will help counter these trends and provide reliable material for further study. Assiduously collating this fairly small but fascinating body of writing, scattered as it is across different countries and continents in libraries, private collections, archives, auction catalogs, and in books where the letters were attributed to other authors, Nicholson shows how Mancini's writing can provide a fruitful example of the voice of a woman who moved in intellectual circles but who historians are reluctant to term “intellectual.”"

Elizabeth C. Goldsmith, Professor Emerita of French literature, Department of Romance Studies, Boston University