Biography:

Princess Aurélie Ghica is the French-born wife of Prince Gregoire Ghica to whom she is married from 1848 to 1858 when he dies in Paris in a carriage accident. She comes to her adoptive country Wallachia before this principality is united to Moldavia in 1856 to become the principality of Romania.

Princess Aurélie Ghica is born in 1820, as Aurélie Soubiran. As a young ingénue she frequents the literary salon of Gavarni, where in 1941, aged only 21 she meets Balzac. This latter “reads” the lines on the young French woman’s hands and predicts “a future much better than anything she could hope for and that she will reign over a nation”. Seven years on, Aurélie Soubiran meets Gregoire Ghica whom he marries in Paris. The next ten years of her married life she lives in the Principality of Wallachia, period which she later describes as being the “happiest of her life”. During this time she absorbs the cultural values of her adoptive country and becomes through her writings a cultural ambassador of Romania abroad. It seems that by 1856 the chances of Gregoire Ghica to be elected on the throne of the United principalities of Moldavia and wallachia were very good indeed, but these were not to be as he dies in Paris, in a carriage accident. His young widow inherits his fortune and stays on in Bucharest as a lady-in-waiting to Princess Elena Cuza. Princesss Aurélie Ghica frequents the literary and political circles and is particularly close to her cousin-in-law the writer Ion Ghica, to the poet Vasile Alecsandri and to the ruling Prince Alexander Ioan Cuza. With this latter she keeps a long friendship during the years of his exile and she feels on his abdication that likewise she would have to leave Romania and return to France. For the next four decades at Lectourne, the province where she established herself Princess Aurélie Ghica maintains a prodigal literary activity and a tenuous contact with Romania and the Romanians.

Ironically, her oeuvre is little known in her adoptive country more so because her contemporaries read her writings in French and felt no need to translat herfter her death in 1904, Princess Aurélie Ghica was less fashionable, as she was identified with a revolved 19th century feudal epoch, whilst Romanians were busy forging their modern society. Now some 180 years from her birth and nearly a century since she died the life of Aurélie Ghica makes a belated come-back in Romanian consciousness through the publication of academic papers on the Franco-Romanian literary scene of the 19th century.


Bibliography:

Publications of Princess Aurélie Ghica
Aurélie Ghica, “Nos étrennes”, 1841, Toulouse ;
Aurélie Ghica, “Virginie”, 1845, Paris ;
Aurélie Ghica, “Marguerite et Jeanne”, 1848, Paris ;
Aurélie Ghica, Le petit livre des femmes, 1848, Paris ;
Aurélie Ghica, La Valachie moderne, 1850, Paris ;
Aurélie Ghica, Lettres d'un penseur des bords du Danube, 1852, Paris
Aurélie Ghica, Denkerbriefe von walachischen Donauufer, 1854 ;
Aurélie Ghica, La Valachie devant l'Europe, 1858, Paris ;
Aurélie Ghica, La Duchesse Cerni, 1866, Paris ;
Aurélie Ghica, Les pensées de la solitude, 1891, Paris ;

Essays published in Lectoure
Aurélie Ghica, “Madame Malborough ou la fidélité conjugale, caprice sentimentale poétisé par l'ange des Souges”, 1877, Lectoure ;
Aurélie Ghica, “Le Carême à St Gervais le Lectoure”, 1877, Lectoure ;
Aurélie Ghica, “Le Prince Napoléon”, 1891, Lectoure ;
Aurélie Ghica, “A mes compatriotes”, 1896, Lectoure ;
Aurélie Ghica, “Démètre Ghica”, 1897, Lectoure ;
Aurélie Ghica, “Orgueil patriotique”, 1896, Lectoure ;
Aurélie Ghica, “Le roi Milan”, 1901, Lectoure ;
Aurélie Ghica, “Le roi Charles de Roumanie”, 1901, Lectoure.

General Bibliography about Princess Aurélie Ghica
1. Lucian Boia, Istorie si mit in constiina româneasca, ed. Humanitas, Bucuresti, 1997,

2. J J Donnard, Les relations littéraires franco-roumaines aux XIX-e siècle. Les Français de Roumanie, Université de Paris Nanterre, 1986;

3. J A Vaillant, Mémoire sur la nécessité de reprendre la question Moldo-Valaque et sur le mode le plus simple d'en obtenir une solution prompte et satisfaisante; documents des archives du M.A.E, dossier Valachie 1855, doc. 39, p.315-321;

4. Eugène Poujade, Chrétiens et Turcs, scènes et souvenirs de la vie politique, militaire et religieuse en Orient, Paris, 1859, p.472;

5. Comtesse Dash, Les mémoires des autres, 2 volumes, Paris, 1864, vol. , p.20;

6. Jules Michelet, Principautés Danubiennes. Marie Rosetti. 1848, dans le volume Légendes démocratiques du Nord, Paris, 1968, p.210;

7. Princesse Aurélie Ghica, La Valachie Moderne, Paris, 1852, p.5;

8. Stanislas Bellanger, Le Keroutza, voyage en Moldo-Valachie, 2 volumes, Paris, 1844;

9. Princesse Aurélie Ghica, Lettres d'un penseur des bords du Danube, Paris, 1852, p.24;

10. Eugène Jouve, Lettres sur la guerre de l'Orient, Lyon, 1854;

11. Xavier Marmier, Du Danube au Caucase. Voyage et littérature, Paris, 1854, p.141-142;

12. Théodore Théot, Ode, Courrier de Bucarest, 2 juillet 1856;

13. Doamna L (Marie Boucher), Omul muntelui, romans original, Bucuresti, 1858, p.67;

16. Chevalier Appert, Voyage dans les Principautés Danubiennes dédié aux princes régnants de la Serbie, de la Moldavie et de la Valachie, Mayence, 1854, p.41;

18. Edgar Quinet, Oeuvres complètes. Les Roumains, Allemagne et Italie, Paris, undated

19. La famille Ghi Pensées de la solitude, préfacé avec ironique bienveillance par son vieil ami, Alexandre Dumas -fils.

23. Louis Puech, Un aventurier gascon, Paul Emile Soubiran, Lectoure, Auch, 1907, apud H. Sales, Étude préliminaire sur la Princesse Ghica dans Bulletin Archéologique et Historique de Gers, III-e trimestre, 1967 ;