1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Adam, Juliette

134471911 Encyclopædia Britannica, Volume 1 — Adam, Juliette

ADAM, JULIETTE (1836–), French writer, known also by her maiden name of Juliette Lamber, was born at Verberie (Oise) on the 4th of October 1836. She has given an account of her childhood, rendered unhappy by the dissensions of her parents, in Le roman de mon enfance et de ma jeunesse (Eng. trans., London and New York, 1902). In 1852 she married a doctor named La Messine, and published in 1858 her Idées antiproudhoniennes sur l’amour, la femme et le mariage, in defence of Daniel Stern (Mme. d’Agoult) and George Sand. On her husband’s death she married in 1868 Antoine Edmond Adam (1816–1877), prefect of police in 1870, and subsequently life-senator; and she established a salon which was frequented by Gambetta and the other republican leaders against the conservative reaction of the ’seventies. In the same interest she founded in 1879 the Nouvelle Revue, which she edited for the first eight years, and in the administration of which she retained a preponderating influence until 1899. She wrote the notes on foreign politics, and was unremitting in her attacks on Bismarck and in her advocacy of a policy of revanche. Mme. Adam was also generally credited with the authorship of papers on various European capitals signed “Paul Vasili,” which were in reality the work of various writers. The most famous of her numerous novels is Païenne (1883). Her reminiscences, Mes premières armes littéraires et politiques (1904) and Mes sentiments et nos idées avant 1870 (1905), contain much interesting gossip about her distinguished contemporaries.