Laure Conan
Laure Conan, born Félicité Angers in 1845, is recognized as the first French-Canadian woman novelist and a significant figure in 19th-century historical romance literature. Raised in Quebec, she was educated by the Ursulines, a Catholic order, which influenced her writing with themes of love for both God and humanity. Conan's literary career began in earnest after her education, and she published her first novel, "Un amour vrai," in 1879, which delves into the psychological dimensions of love. Her 1884 work, "Angéline de Montbrun," utilizes letters and journal entries to narrate the tragic courtship of a young girl, highlighting the intertwining themes of nation, family, and religion prevalent in her time. Throughout the following decades, she contributed numerous novels, articles, poems, and biographies to French-Canadian literature. Despite her creative output, a theatrical adaptation of her work, "L'oublié," was poorly received in the 1920s. Conan remained unmarried and spent much of her life in La Malbaie, Quebec. She passed away at the age of seventy-nine, with her final book, "La Sève immortelle," published posthumously in 1925, continuing her exploration of romance set against a Canadian backdrop.
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Laure Conan
Author
- Born: January 9, 1845
- Birthplace: Murray Bay, Lower Canada
- Died: June 6, 1924
Biography
Laure Conan, a prolific, nineteenth century historical romance writer renown as the first French-Canadian woman novelist, was born Félicité Angers to a blacksmith father and a shopkeeper mother in the Quebec county of Charlevoix in 1845. As a child, her parents sent her to study with the nuns at Ursulines of Quebec. No one nurtured her writing talent, though threads of Catholicism would later weave into her work.
After she left the Ursulines, she began to publish in earnest. Her first novel, Un amour vrai (1879), explores, as many of her novels do, the psychological aspects of love for God and people. Another piece that depicts this theme is Angéline de Montbrun (1884), the story of a young girl’s tragic courtship as told through the forms of letters, third-person narration, and the mourning protagonist’s journal. The themes of nation, family, and religion were common during Conan’s time and would continue to serve her the entirety of her career.
In the following decade, Conan wrote a number of notable novels, articles, poems, and biographies. By the 1920’s, she decided to take L’oublié (1900) to the stage, reworked as Aux jours de Maisonneuv, but the play was not well received.
Conan never married and lived the majority of her life in her family’s home at La Malbaie. Her last book, La Sève immortelle (1925), was published the year after her death. True to form, it is the story of a love affair set in Canada. Conan died at the age of seventy-nine.