comtesse de Louise-Eléonore-Charlotte-Adélaide d'Osmond Boigne

Born Adélaïde Charlotte Louise Éléonore d'Osmond in Versailles on February 10, 1781, she grew up close to the world of the French court before the Revolution forced her family into exile. She later returned to France and, through her marriage, became the Comtesse de Boigne.

She is best remembered as a writer of memoirs. Her Memoirs of the Comtesse de Boigne offer a lively account of French society from the late eighteenth century into the nineteenth, drawing on a life that spanned the ancien régime, revolution, empire, and restoration.

Readers still turn to her for the same reason historians do: she had a gift for noticing people clearly and describing them with intelligence, humor, and restraint. Her work has endured not just as a historical source, but as engaging literature in its own right.