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Letters from a Portuguese Nun to an officer in the French Army

At work I've been going through the main library and looking at all the pre-1830 books to decide if they should be moved over to Special Collections. One of the books on my list was this one. It is fascinating; it's the first ever epistolary fiction to turn up in France at the end of the 17th century. It was claimed to be translated from the Portuguese by a French editor who "lost" the original letters. It is now commonly believed that he made it up, but I'm not so sure. This edition is a translation of a later French edition which also includes a separate series of letters from a noblewoman to her lover. In this version there is no difference between the two, and the noblewoman's letters are presented first, and then the nun's with no separation in numbering. I imagine this would be very confusing if you didn't know the background as the sender went from being a woman out in society to living in a nunnery. The first series reminded me a bit of Dangerous Liaisons as the woman clearly got quite jealous of her lover and tried to get him to feel the same. They were amusing but not nearly as emotional as the nun's letters. There was something terribly realistic and heart-breaking about the letters. I'm sure fiction can be written this well, but not sure these are. Either way they're realistic enough to stand the test of time. I thought it interesting that she had failed to hide the affair from her family and the convent and mentioned casually how she had gotten into trouble. They end with her, after being firmly rejected by the man, saying that she'd try and find another man. Fantastic doomed love.

This is an illustration from of the nun,



The French version can be found here,
http://www.bmlisieux.com/archives/religieu.htm

I haven't been able to find an electronic version of the English translation yet though.