Delphine de Girardin in Three Portraits

Abstract

Delphine Gay de Girardin (1804-1855) was a poet, a novelist and a playwright, better known for her salon and her chronicles of Parisian life published in her husband’s newspaper La Presse than for her literary works. Ranked in the category of “minor” writers, she soon fell into oblivion, in spite of the undeniable prestige she had acquired in the literary circles of the Restoration and the July Monarchy. This article traces the problematic career of this exceptional woman, through three portraits of her—a painting by Louis Hersent, a caricature by Honoré Daumier, and a photograph by Charles Hugo. This iconography, which served to delegitimize Delphine de Girardin, paradoxically contributed to the recent rediscovery of this writer of disenchantment and failure, who was one of the most original and controversial figures of the Romantic generation.