Madame Lebrun brought out her Memoirs at the suggestion of her friend, the Princess Dolgoruki, in 1835. The authoress was born in 1756, at Paris, where she died in 1842. She was the daughter of Louis VigÉe, an obscure portrait painter. Her baptismal name was Marie Louise Elisabeth. In 1776 Mademoiselle VigÉe was married to Jean Baptiste Pierre Lebrun, a notable picture dealer and critic, known also to his contemporaries as an inveterate gambler.

This book forms a rendering of Madame Carette's edition of the Lebrun Memoirs, slightly abridged for the sake of uniformity with the "Memoirs of the Countess Potocka" and the "Memoirs of a Contemporary," issuing from the same hands as the present volume.