Anne-Catherine de Ligniville, Madame Helvétius Madame Helvétius is mentioned briefly in the Robert Lawson children's book "Ben and Me" (1939) as having many important people at her dinners, and also having cats (distressing to the protagonist, who is a mouse) and a particularly disagreeable dog. Anne-Catherine de Ligniville, Madame Helvétius Anne-Catherine de Ligniville, Madame Helvétius (23 July 1722 – 12 August 1800), also Anne-Catherine de Ligniville d'Autricourt, nicknamed "Minette", maintained a renowned salon in France in the eighteenth century. One of the twenty-one children of Jean-Jacques de Ligniville and his wife Charlotte de Saureau, Anne-Catherine de Ligniville, the niece of Madame de Graffigny, married the
Anne Jane Cupples Anne Jane Cupples Anne Jane Cupples, "née" Douglas (4 January 1839 – 14 November 1896) was a Scottish writer and populariser of science. She was married to a famous maritime novelist George Cupples, and after his death moved to be with her sisters in New Zealand, where she died in 1896. She wrote around fifty books in total, mostly intended for children, under the name Mrs George Cupples. Anne was born on 4 January 1839 at 34 Gilmore Place, Edinburgh, the second daughter and third of seven children of Archibald Douglas of Morton, and his wife, Caroline Montague Douglas, "née"