Elisa Mercœur

Élisa Mercœur was a French writer, poet and essayist and was one of the most prominent names in Breton Romanticism. Mercœur was a child prodigy and autodidact, who published two collections of elegies, the first one when she was 16. During her lifetime, she was known as "La Muse armoricaine" and was widely known throughout France. After Mercœur's death in 1835, her mother posthumously edited her work to ensure it survived for posterity and in the process constructed much of her modern image as a virginal child prodigy. According to Wendy Greenberg, "her notoriety was based on an apparent acceptance of dominant views concerning femininity and shows clear engagement with the model of masculine genius and voice". Mercœur is renowned more for her tragically short life rather than her poetry, which has largely been forgotten. It wasn't until 1990 with the publication of Geoffroy Daniel's biography "Elisa Mercoeur Nantaise romantique" that she began to be more widely known.