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Early Modern · 1654; letters to 1671
The Relation of 1654 and the Letters
Marie of the Incarnation · 1599–1672
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What it is
A widow who left her son to enter a convent, then sailed to Quebec to found a school, writing home about mystical states, Iroquois raids, and Algonquian grammar.
Why it lasted
The most substantial body of writing by a woman in New France, and a rare combination of high mysticism with dictionary-making in two Indigenous languages.
Where to read it
Public domain and free to read in full, though not held here. The archives below have it.
These open a search on each archive rather than a direct link, which is the honest way to point at an edition nobody here has checked line by line.
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