For centuries, French was the language of international commercial and diplomatic relations, a near-dominant language in literature and poetry, and was widely used in teaching. It even became the fashionable language of choice in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries for upper class Dutch, Russians, Italians, Egyptians, and others for personal correspondence, travel journals, and memoirs. This book is the first to take a close look at how French was used in that latter context: outside of France, in personal and private life. It gathers contributions from historians, literary scholars, and linguists and covers a wide range of geographical areas.

Madeleine van Strien-Chardonneau is a retired lecturer of French language and culture and an Associate Member of Leiden University Institute for Cultural Disciplines. Her scholarly interests include the accounts of French travelers in the Netherlands in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the history of the teaching of French in the Netherlands, the francophone Dutch writer Isabelle de Charrière and the personal writings of Netherlanders in French.Marie-Christine Kok Escalle has been Associate Professor of French Culture and Intercultural Communication at Utrecht University, and after her retirement she continued as Senior Researcher at the Institute for Cultural Inquiry (Utrecht University). Her scholarly interests include the cultural role the French language has played in the Netherlands, specially in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and the development of intercultural competence through foreign language learning and teaching in the past as well as nowadays.

IntroductionMarie-Christine Kok Escalle & Madeleine van Strien-Chardonneau1. Le français langue seconde, langue de la relation intime, de la relation à soi et à l'autreMadeleine van Strien-Chardonneau & Marie-Christine Kok EscalleI. From French as a language of the bilingual Netherlands to the 'language of universality' in a wider Europe (sixteenth - eighteenth centuries) / Du français langue du bilinguisme aux Pays-Bas à la 'langue de l'universalité' dans l'Europe élargie (seizième - dix-huitième siècles)2. Vertu versus Deugd: Noble women and the French language in the Eastern Netherlands around 1600Sophie Reinders3. Correspondance de Gijsbert Karel van Hogendorp (1763-1834) avec sa mère Carolina van Haren (1741-1812): Une formation morale, intellectuelle et sociale par le biais du français, langue secondeMadeleine van Strien-Chardonneau4. Le français langue de l'intime dans la correspondance de la comtesse d'Albany (1752-1824)Francesca Piselli5. Seduction, introspection, experimentation: The epistolary code switching of Giustiniana WynneNancy IsenbergII. The use of French as a second language: From continuity to geographical growth (nineteenth and twentieth centuries) / De l'utilisation du français langue seconde: De la continuité à l'expansion géographique (dix-neuvième-vingtième siècles)6. The French language in the Diaries of Olga Davydova: An example of Russian-French Aristocratic BilingualismMichèle Debrenne7. Les Souvenirs du jeune Hora Siccama (1854-1858): De l'exercice de style à l'expression de soiMarie-Christine Kok Escalle8. 'Intimate' Notes from Hell: Gallipoli Diaries by Tevfik Riza Bey (1914-1916)Hanife Güven & Devrim Çetin Güven9. Writing in French. Izzet Melih Devrim (1887-1966) and his Leïla (1912)Banu Öztürk