Louise Colet (1810–1876)

Louise Colet, née Révoil de Servannes, was born in Aix-en-Provence, the was the daughter of a French businessman. In 1834, she married Hippolyte-Raymond Colet, an academic musician, to escape provincial life for Paris. She's best known today as the muse and lover of Gustave Flaubert, but she was a pioneering female poet and writer in her own right and her work won four prizes from the Académie française. She published her first collection of poetry, Fleurs du Midi, in 1836. She established a popular and influential literary salon that became a meeting place for leading figures such as Alfred de Musset, Alfred de Vigny, and Victor Cousin, who was also her lover at one time. Her stormy relationship with Flaubert lasted about eight years, and she's believed to have been the inspiration for Madame Bovary. After their affair ended, Louise published a bitter semi-autobiographical novel called Lui (A View of Him, 1859), which caused a sensation.