author
Laure Conan
1845–1924
A pioneering voice in Quebec literature, she helped open the door for French-Canadian women novelists and brought unusual psychological depth to her fiction. Best known for Angéline de Montbrun, she wrote with a strong sense of inner life, faith, and feeling.
2 Audiobooks
Angéline de Montbrun
by Laure Conan
Un amour vrai
by Laure Conan
About the author
Born Marie-Louise-Félicité Angers in La Malbaie, Quebec, Laure Conan was a French-Canadian writer and journalist who is widely regarded as the first French-Canadian woman novelist. Writing under a pen name, she built a literary career at a time when very few women in Quebec were able to do so.
Her best-known work, Angéline de Montbrun (serialized in 1881–82), is often described as the first French-Canadian psychological novel. Readers and critics have noted how her fiction combines emotional intensity with close attention to conscience, memory, religion, family, and national identity.
Conan also wrote biographies, journalism, and other prose, and she remains an important figure in Canadian literary history. She died in Quebec City on June 6, 1924, but her work is still remembered for giving early French-Canadian fiction a more intimate and inward-looking voice.