Stéphanie-Félicité de Genlis’s 1782 epistolary text Adèle et Théodore, ou Lettres sur l’Éducation documents the efforts of a Parisian mother, the Baroness d’Almane, in educating her children—primarily the titular Adèle. The family, along with a small entourage, retreat to the country to escape the perceived influence of city life and its flawed education. The Baroness creates and contrives educational experiences for her charge based on the professed “fifteen years of reflections, observations, and study” with which Genlis opens her preface—an immediate and sustained conflation of author and character that continues throughout the text (Brouard-Arends 2006, 49). Genlis’s Adèle et Théodore, ou Lettres sur l’Éducation is also a response—a robust response—to the precepts outlined in Jean Jacques Rousseau’s Émile, ou de l’éducation [Emile, or on Education] (1762), though there are many points of agreement with Rousseau alongside Genlis’s criticisms.