Louise Swanton Belloc

Swanton, one of four children, was born in La Rochelle on 1 October 1796 to James Swanton (an Irish officer in the French service) and Marguérite-Louise-Joséphine Chassériau at her mother's ancestral home.[1][3][4][6] Her parents ensured that she received an excellent education as a child, with a particular focus on English language and literature.[2][3][7] Swanton began writing at seventeen, and her first translation — Patriarches, ou la terre de Chanaan (Patriarchal Times, or the Land of Canaan) by Adelaide O'Keeffe — was published in 1818.[7][4] Shortly thereafter, she was engaged to write for the Revue encyclopédique,[3] encouraged and mentored by its editor and founder Jullien, who praised her "compassionate zeal for the unfortunate".[5]

In 1821, despite the protestations of her father (who considered the Bellocs too bourgeois),[6] Swanton married the French painter Jean-Hilaire Belloc, with whom she had two daughters (Louise, 1822–1895, and Adelaide, 1828–1897) and a son (Louis, 1830-1872).[1][4][8] Her son would later marry Bessie Rayner Parkes, a prominent English feminist and personal friend of Swanton's, and have two children, who became prolific writers in their own right: Marie Adelaide Belloc Lowndes (a novelist) and Hilaire Belloc (a poet and historian).[4]

Within Swanton's large circle of acquaintances were to be found such prominent figures as Charles Dickens, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Victor Hugo, Emile Souvestre, Stendhal, Mary Elizabeth Mohl, Barthélemy St Hilaire, Lamartine, and Maria Edgeworth.[4][8] She amassed a significant correspondence over her life, though much was damaged or destroyed during the Franco-Prussian War.[4]

Some of her most notable literary translations include Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin, Elizabeth Gaskell's Cranford, four works by Dickens (who was also a personal friend), Oliver Goldsmith's The Vicar of Wakefield, the works of Walter Scott, Thomas Moore's Irish Melodies, the memoirs of Byron, and a great number of Edgeworth's works.[1][2][4][3][8] She herself authored over forty books, including a life of Byron that was published with an introduction by Stendhal, and, in collaboration with Edgeworth, a series of early reading books for French children.[2][3][7]

Swanton often collaborated on her projects with her close friend Adelaide De Montgolfier, daughter of the famous aeronaut Jacques-Étienne Montgolfier.[2][3][7][4] Shortly after the July Revolution of 1830, Swanton is said to have been engaged by the French government to help General Lafayette establish public libraries in France, but the plan was never brought to fruition.[5] Instead, she and Montgolfier created what the latter called a "choice circulating library" for "sound and healthy reading",[5][1] geared in particular towards young women and designed to "develop and enkindle the soul, enlighten the mind, and vivify and direct the imagination".[5] The pair also founded La Ruche, journal d'études familière, a monthly magazine dedicated to the education of young women, and co-authored a number of children's books.[7][5]

After Swanton's death on 6 November 1881, she was buried alongside Montgolfier (and her son, Louis Belloc) at La Celle-Saint-Cloud, France, location of the Swanton-Belloc family home.[4]