Anne-Catherine de Ligniville, Madame Helvétius 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 philosopher Helvétius in 1751. By the time he died twenty years later, the couple had amassed a vast fortune, and with it Madame Helvetius maintained her salon which featured the greatest figures of the Enlightenment for over five decades. Among
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"