Henriette Guizot de Witt (1829–1908)

Henriette Elisabeth Guizot was the eldest daughter of the French historian and Prime Minister François Guizot and his second wife Éliza Dillon. When she was about four years hold, her mother died in childbirth, and she and her siblings were educated by their paternal grandmother and her friend Rosine Chabaud-Latour. Henriette learned Italian and German, as well as English when her family went into exile in London for a while after the Revolution of 1848. She her younger sister Pauline were inseparable and married brothers who were also close. Henriette married Conrad de Witt, a politician, with whom she had two daughters; and on the same day, Pauline married Cornélis de Witt. Henriette served as her father's unofficial secretary, and began to write books to help with the family's financial difficulties. Between 1884 and 1904, she published nearly 100 hundred books, including novels, romance novels, educational texts, and historical narratives, some of them co-authored with her father. The Académie française awarded her the Prix Montyon for her books Scènes d'histoire et de famille (Scenes of History and Family, 1869), Les Femmes dans l'histoire (Women in History, 1889), and La Charité en France (Charity in France, 1892). She wrote stories for children, including Contes d'une mère à ses petits-enfants (Tales from a Mother to Her Grandchildren, 1870), and translated works of Shakespeare and Charles Dickens into French. She also did charity work, opened a school for destitute infants and children near the family home in Val-Richer, Normandy, and founded with friends in Paris an organization for women released from prison. Above all, she was dedicated to her father’s memory. She compiled his archives and letters and published two books about him: M. Guizot dans sa famille et avec ses amis (1880) and Lettres de M. Guizot à sa famille et à ses amis (1884).

This author is Henriette Elisabeth Guizot de Witt (1829-1908), an author in her own right as well as daughter and co-author of the French historian and Prime Minister, François Guizot. Do not combine with their joint entry. Also do not confuse her with her father's first wife Pauline de Meulan Guizot, known simply as Madame Guizot (1773-1827), also an author.