Deaths on May 31

Eugénie de Guérin, French author (b. 1805)

Eugénie de Guérin (29 January 1805 – 31 May 1848) was a French writer and the sister of the poet Maurice de Guérin.

Her Journals (1861, Eng. trans., 1865) and her Lettres (1864, Eng. trans., 1865) indicated the possession of gifts of as rare an order as those of her brother, though of a somewhat different kind. In her case mysticism assumed a form more strictly religious, and she continued to mourn her brother's loss of his early Catholic faith. Five years older than he, she cherished a love for him which was blended with a somewhat motherly anxiety. After his death she began the collection and publication of the scattered fragments of his writings. She died, however, before her task was completed.

See Sainte-Beuve, Causeries du lundi (vol. xii.) and Nouveaux Lundis (vol. iii.); G Merlet, Causeries sur les femmes et les hIres (Paris, 1865); Selden, L'Esprit des femmes de notre temps (Paris, 1864); Marelle, Eugénie et Maurice de Guérin (Berlin, 1869); Harriet Parr, M. and E. de Guérin, a monograph (London, 1870); and Matthew Arnold's essays on Maurice and Eugénie de Guérin, in his Essays in Criticism.