Travels into Spain by Marie-Catherine Le Jumel de Barneville, baronne d'Aulnoy (review)

Reviewed by: Travels into Spain by Marie-Catherine Le Jumel de Barneville, baronne d'Aulnoy Nathalie Hester Le Jumel de Barneville, Marie-Catherine, baronne d'Aulnoy. Travels into Spain. Ed. and Trans. Gabrielle Verdier. Iter Press, 2022. Pp. 303. ISBN 978-1-64959-057-2. $54.95 (Paper). ISBN 978-1-64959-058-9. $54.95 (eBook). With this publication, a key work by Marie-Catherine Le Jumel de Barneville, baronne d'Aulnoy, is now available in a new English translation. As editor and translator Gabrielle Verdier emphasizes in her excellent introduction, while d'Aulnoy is recognized today primarily for her fairy tales, it was her historical works that launched her career as a writer. In addition, Travels into Spain was the publication for which she was perhaps best known in the decades following its 1691 publication. Indeed, this epistolary travel account was quickly translated into English and went through numerous editions in both French and English and was considered a reference for European travelers through the end of the eighteenth century. Although d'Aulnoy's works were popular in the early modern period, Travels into Spain met with a negative reception later on when, for example, editors like Raymond Foulché-Delbosc criticized her use of explicitly fictional devices, in particular embedded tales and invented travel companions, and concluded that d'Aulnoy had never set foot in Spain. Verdier cogently elucidates the connections between gender and genre and highlights the ways in which the author, who faced exile after attempting to set up her husband for the crime of treason, was able to establish herself as a woman writer. D'Aulnoy was not only the first Frenchwoman to publish a travel account as a complete relation de voyage, but she was also the first to publish historical memoirs. Furthermore, at a time when works by women came out anonymously, d'Aulnoy revealed her gender in several of her early works, which have the author, Madame B*** D***, listed on the title page. Verdier terms this "a stunning move" (19). Verdier's lively translation skillfully conveys d'Aulnoy's attention to landscape, keen eye for societal details, and superb story-telling abilities. The fifteen letters, which recount travel from Bayonne to Toledo, are brimming with anecdotes about the challenges of travel, depictions of landscapes and bustling towns and cities, descriptions of Spanish cultural and religious rituals (Lent, bullfighting, Inquisition trials, conversation at the Spanish court), and dramatic stories of Spanish love and violence, all of which would have been titillating for [End Page 163] her French readers. D'Aulnoy's focus on women's fashion and behavior stands out in particular. In fact, as the letters make clear and Verdier underscores in the introduction, part of the appeal of d'Aulnoy's text comes precisely from her position as a woman traveler, intent on conveying the point of view of a French noblewoman with literary talents who had access to women's spaces that were often off-limits to men. The supporting elements of this edition and translation include pertinent and useful footnotes (including relevant comparisons with earlier English editions), subheadings, reproductions of paintings from the period, a bibliography of primary and secondary sources, and an extensive index. The map of d'Aulnoy's itinerary is a welcome element in this volume. Verdier's subheadings, some of them quite informal, are clearly aimed at conveying the popular appeal of d'Aulnoy's text: "Snacking with the Princess," "How Homebodies Eat," and "Paying for Fake News." This reader's only reservation concerns the decision to include the brief summaries that Maria Susana Seguin's 2005 French edition of Travels into Spain provides in lieu of some of the lengthy lists and historical details published in the original text. While these sections were adapted by d'Aulnoy from earlier sources and may be "tedious for a modern reader" (28), their removal recalls Foulché-Delbosc's excluding the four embedded tales in the 1926 edition of the text under the pretense that they were irrelevant in a travel account. Perhaps today's readers might enjoy the option of reading about the history of the Inquisition, for example, or comments about the "lure of the...