Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve

Who was Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve?

Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve was a French author influenced by Madame d'Aulnoy, Charles Perrault, and various précieuse writers.

Barbot de Villeneuve was born in La Rochelle. She is particularly noted for her La Belle et la Bête, which is the oldest known variant of the fairy tale Beauty and the Beast. First published in La jeune américaine, et les contes marins, it is over a hundred pages long, containing many subplots, and involving a genuinely savage Beast, not merely a beastly facade. Her lengthy version was abridged, rewritten, and published by Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont, to produce the version most commonly retold.

In 1767 she wrote a novel La Jardinière de Vincennes. She was a close friend of the controversial writer Claude Jolyot de Crébillon. She died in Paris.