Brada (writer)

Henrietta (also known as, "Marie") Consuelo Sansom was born 24 April 1847, in Paris.[lower-alpha 1] She was the daughter of a wealthy British expatriate, Charles Sansom. Brada spent most of her childhood boarding in a girls' private school located near the Arc de Triomphe.[lower-alpha 2] Being born out of wedlock, she found herself destitute upon the death of her father, whose inheritance was shared by his legitimate children.

In 1868, she married an Italian count twenty years her senior, Efisio Quigini Puliga (1827-1876),[3] adviser to the Italian Legation in Paris, who died in 1876 following a long illness. To provide for the education of her two young children, she began to write chronicles and short stories under the pseudonym "Bradamente", later abbreviated to "Brada", which were published in the Journal des débats, Le Figaro, the Revue de Paris as well as in several other periodicals such as La Vie parisienne and L'Illustration where she used the pseudonym, "Mosca".[4] Her novels and short stories, which soon appeared in bookstores, met with great success and received awards from the Académie Française with the Montyon Prize in 1890, the Jouy Prize in 1895, and the Xavier Marmier Prize in 1934. She thus continued to write until at the age of over 80, leading a simple life in Paris interspersed with stays in Italy.[5]

The success of her novels was due in part to the aristocratic circles that she had participated in, first while in Paris and London, where she had lived with her father, then in Berlin, where she had followed her husband in his diplomatic career. They were largely based on "cosmopolitan high-society intrigues" depicting "supremely aristocratic passions and vices".[6] Often compared to Gyp, Brada was appreciated by her contemporary readers for her "spontaneity and freshness" as well as for her "elegance and distinction".[7]

She dabbled in different genres. Her first book, Madame de Sévigné: Her Correspondents and Contemporaries, written in English and published in London in 1873, was a study of the correspondents and contemporaries of Madame de Sévigné. Brada's remarks on the decline of the aristocracy and the emancipation of women, which appeared in her Notes sur Londres (Notes on London) in 1895, caught the attention of Henry James.[8]

In later life, she published two memories, one in English, the other in French. In the first, published in 1899 under the title My Father and I, she evoked her early childhood as well as her first steps in British high society in the company of her father, to whom she felt bound by a great complicity.[9][10] In the second, entitled Souvenirs d'une petite Second Empire and published in 1921, she recounted her memories of boarding school and, among many other anecdotes, the visits she made to Ewelina Hańska, Balzac's widow.[11][12]

Brada's tomb

She died 5 August 1938, Paris,[13] and was buried in the Père Lachaise Cemetery (section 46).[14]

• 1890, Montyon Prize (Madame d’Épone)[15]
• 1895, Jouy Prize (Notes sur l’Angleterre)[15]
• 23 July 1925, Chevalier, Legion of Honour[1]
• 1934, Xavier Marmier Prize[15]