page_title: Athénaïs Michelet
section_title: Marriage and writing career
hierarchical_section_title: Athénaïs Michelet / Marriage and writing career
caption_attribution_description: Depicted person&#58; &#32;Athénaïs Michelet&#32;– French writer
context_page_description: Athénaïs Michelet, née Athénaïs Mialaret, was a French natural history writer and memoirist.
context_section_description: Athénaïs married the much older Jules Michelet in 1849. She had first encountered Michelet through his literary work, having written to him for guidance after having read Du prêtre, de la femme et de la famille; at the time she was tutoring the children of the Princess Cantacuzène in Vienna. Their literary conversations remained the basis of their relationship even after their marriage. She and her husband entered into a shared literary life, collaborating on L'Oiseau (1856), L'Insecte (1857), La Mer (1861) and La Montagne (1868). Although these books were published under Jules Michelet's name only, he explicitly credited Athénaïs not only for turning his attention to natural history, but also as an active collaborator. At his death, they were working on La nature.
  She subsequently published several books in her own right including Mémoires d'une enfant in 1867. She corresponded with Charles Darwin about cat behaviour , and her book Les chats was published posthumously in 1904. She wrote a book expressly for the English audience that was published as Nature, or the poetry of earth and sea (London: T. Nelson 1872).
caption: Bust of Madame Michelet, 1899 by Antoine Bourdelle
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