| Marie-Anne de Roumier-Robert | |
| Birth Date: | 1705 |
| Death Date: | 12 January 1771 |
| Death Place: | Paris |
| Nationality: | French |
| Known For: | Voyage de Milord Céton dans les sept planètes |
| Occupation: | Writer |
Marie-Anne de Roumier-Robert was an 18th-century French writer.[1] She wrote one of the earliest known works of science fiction, Voyage de Milord Céton dans les sept planètes ("Lord Seton's Voyage Among the Seven Planets", 1765).[2] [3]
Marie-Anne Roumier was from a family related to Bernard Le Bovier de Fontenelle and received a good education. Her talent for writing had been noticed by Fontenelle. Ruined by Law's, she retired to a convent before marrying Jean Paul Robert, a lawyer in Parliament, in 1737.[4]
Marie-Anne de Roumier-Robert was a writer of the early 18th century.[5]
She was representative of the rise of women's writing in the 1760s. In her novels, she featured women using philosophical discourses. In Les Ondins, a moral tale and Amazon utopia published in 1768, she defended the idea of a woman being able to choose the man she was to marry. Her novel Nicole de Beauveais went further, suggesting the possibility of an autonomous life for women outside marriage. Voyage de Milord Céton dans les sept planètes published in 1765 is also considered to be one of the first known feminist science fiction novels.[6]
Her work presents a permanent tension on the question of being able to be both a woman and a philosopher of the Enlightenment, while the Enlightenment excluded women from reason.