Martel de Janville, Comtesse de (1850–1932)
Martel de Janville, Comtesse de (1850–1932)
French novelist . Name variations: Comtesse de Mirabeau; (pseudonym) Gyp. Born Sybille Gabrielle Marie Antoinette de Riquetti de Mirabeau at the Château de Koëtsal, Morbihan, in Brittany, around 1850; died in Neuilly in 1932; descendant of Gabriel-Honoré Riqueti, Count Mirabeau (1749–1791).
A French writer, known to millions under her pseudonym Gyp, Sybille Gabrielle, countess de Martel de Janville, wrote for La Vie Parisienne and La Revue des Deux Mondes. She created several well-known characters (notably Paulette, Loulou, and le petit Bob) who appeared in her sketches and gave titles to several of her humorous novels. Among the latter are Autour de mariage (1883, dramatized in the same year with M. Crémieux), Ce que femme veut! (1883), Sans voiles (1885), Autour du divorce (1886), Bob au salon, with illustrations by "Bob" (1888–90), C'est nous qui sont l'histoire (1890), Passionette (1891), and Mariage de Chiffon (1894). On Martel de Janville's death, Janet Flanner wrote: "No popular French writer ever covered so much time or took so little trouble about it, since she wrote as easily as she remembered. She was a trenchant conversationalist, no prude, despised the tepid mind, hated fakes, fatuousness, and, on the whole, the Third Republic, under which she died." In her writings, Martel de Janville skewered Dreyfus.
sources:
Flanner, Janet. Paris Was Yesterday. NY: Viking, 1972.