Lenclos, Anne

(1616-1706)

   literary figure, courtesan

   Born in Paris, Anne Lenclos, or Ninon de Lenclos as she was known, was an educated, cultured, and, for the period, liberated woman (she had as her lovers Admiral gaspard coligny, le grand condé, and the marquis d'estrées). She was highly regarded by Mme de maintenon, Mme de la Sablière, and Mme de la Fayette, and she brought together in her salon an intellectual society who, like her, professed libertinage in mores (as followers of Epicurus) and ideas (in reading michel de montaigne). A friend of charles de saint-évremond, to whom she addressed her Lettres (published in 1886), Ninon de Lenclos was the link between the current skepticism of the 17th century and the philosophic movement of the 18th.