Louise Henriette Volland , known as Sophie , born towards 1725 and dead in February 1785, is a French épistolière .

Sophie Volland was called actually Louise-Henriette, but it bore the name, very popular in, of Sophie. She was the friend, the mistress and the privileged corresponding Denis Diderot of 1755 to 1769 which estimated its intelligence, its formation and its judgment. 29 years old when it met Diderot, it was the ideal counterpoint of Nanette, his wife chicanière and of her elegant mistress, Madeleine de Puisieux.

For a woman of her time, Sophie was very cultivated like good informed by Diderot on the authors of her time. She was, moreover, for the philosopher, a confidante to which it could entrust about his work and of its private life and to which it could ask council. She had a difficult relation with a very dominant mother who frequently followed it to the countryside to Isle, whereas she would have preferred to live in Paris. The letters of Diderot with Sophie give invaluable indications on its life and its work, its reflections and are regarded as an important part of its work.

To believe of them the various letters left by Diderot, the subjects seem inexhaustible under the feather of the two épistoliers. Most of these letters disappeared and only the letters of Diderot with Sophie were preserved. The letters of Sophie, as for them, were never found.

One does not know a portrait of Sophie. The only concrete details that one knows of Sophie are that it carried glasses, that it was of fragile constitution, had “the shackle dry” but endowed with a strong spirit, occupied of science and philosophy, which filled the lover of admiration.

Sophie Volland follows little, in death, Diderot deceased the July 31st 1784.

Modern edition

• Letters in Sophie Volland , ED. Jean Varloot, Paris, Gallimard, 1999

References

• Anne-Marie Boilleau, Connection and connections in the letters of Diderot with Sophie Volland , Paris, Champion, 1999.
• Jacques Chouillet, Denis Diderot, Sophie Volland: a dialog with a voice , Paris, Bookstore Honore Champion, 1986.
• Martine Darmon Meyer, Letters and answers of Diderot to Sophie Volland: personal, political and literary echoes , Paris, Letters modern, 1967.
• Paul Ledieu, Diderot and Sophie Volland , Paris, Publications of the Center, 1925.