Brief guide to manuscripts collections| William L. Clements Library The University of Michigan P.-A. C. de Beaumarchais Papers |
Beaumarchais, a French watchmaker turned playwright, was engaged in the king's secret service, and on missions to England he grew interested in the complains of the American colonies against Great Britain. When the revolution began, he induced the French government to aid the Americans. As agent of the Spanish and French governments, he transported supplies to the rebels.
Beaumarchais undertook to supply the French National Convention with muskets from Holland and found the adventure ruinous. Charged with treason in 1792, he was arrested, released, and proscribed; he did not return to Paris until 1796. Ten years earlier he had married his third wife, Marie-Thérèse-Emilie Willermaulaz (ca.1751-1816). Their daughter Eugénie had been born in 1778.
Letters and documents of the family of Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais, playwright, secret agent in the American Revolution.
This collection contains 58 letters of Beaumarchais and 16 documents relating to him, 1767-1816; and 5 letters of Eugénie, 1818-1832. Selected letters have been published in Lettres inédites de Beaumarchais, de Mme. de Beaumarchais et de leur fille Eugénie, ed. Gilbert Chinard (Paris and Baltimore, 1929) and in Janette C. Gatty, Beaumarchais sous le Révolution (Leiden, 1976).
Purchased, 1937
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