“Born into a Dutch aristocratic family, Belle de Zuylen, now more usually known as Isabelle de Charrière, is important principally as a novelist and letter-writer, and as the friend of James Boswell and later of Benjamin Constant. Brought up at Slot Zuilen, near Utrecht, she early showed an independent and unconventional turn of mind. […] After 1771 she lived at Colombier, near Neuchâtel, where she wrote novels, political and literary pamphlets, plays, and poetry, some of which remained in manuscript until the publication of her Oeuvres complètes (1979-1984). Her fiction brings a keen and probing intelligence to bear on moral questions, particularly where relations between the sexes are concerned. […]”