D’Eon:
THE WONDER OF HER SEX
Bloomsbury, October 2026.
For fifty years, the Chevalier d'Eon served the French crown as secret agent, cavalry officer and diplomat — presenting as a man. In 1777 d'Eon was presented to Marie-Antoinette and Louis XVI at Versailles — in a dress. The Chevalière's transition helped make her one of Europe's first celebrities, hailed in London as "the wonder of her sex". My new book follows every twist and turn of d'Eon's career, to St Petersburg, Versailles, London and beyond. It shows how effectively d'Eon curated her public image, through the press, through portraits and through virtuoso displays of swordswomanship in her signature black dress. This is a story of espionage and self-invention, set against a backdrop of war and revolution.
SPY
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In the 1750s d'Eon entered The King's Secret (Secret du Roi): a network of agents formed by the French king Louis XV, a network the king kept secret from his own ministers and even from his mistress, Pompadour. After secret service in Russia, d'Eon took a cavalry commission, fighting against Britain and her allies in the Seven Years War. In 1762 d'Eon became a diplomat, sent to London to broker peace. Success seemed to go to d'Eon's head. In 1764 disputes over pay led d'Eon to publish a raft of French diplomatic despatches in book form. The Wikileaks of its day, it was the resulting scandal that first brought d'Eon to the public eye: as a rogue diplomat seeking refuge in London from the Bastille.
CELEBRITY
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D'Eon constantly fed stories to the press, commissioned portrait engravings and even went on the stage herself when the French Revolution put an end to her French royal pension. In 1773 she commissioned this mezzotint of herself as the bare-breasted goddess Pallas emerging from her tent. That was four years before she first appeared in female-coded costume in public. D'Eon was using this very public medium to experiment with a new way of presenting herself, as a woman (a goddess, no less) rather than as a man.
ENIGMA
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Almost half of this material consists of unpublished drafts telling the story of d'Eon's gender transition, using a variety of genres and avatars. In some of these texts, d'Eon presents as a pious Christian virgin. In others, she writes as a galant adventurer. As we approach d'Eon's tercentenary in 2028, I am working to bring this archive together online, in English translation. What with all the insertions, marginalia and crossings-out, it will be quite a challenge. But if it works, we will be able to follow, step-by-step, how d'Eon reinvented herself, over and over, across her long life.
ADVANCE PRAISE
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"In this wonderfully vivid study we enter an eighteenth-century labyrinth of mirrors, in which the boundaries of sex/gender are blurred and then refracted through espionage, intrigue and courtly adventure. Conlin reminds us of the timeless complexity and elusiveness of identity."
Gina Gwenffrewi, University of Edinburgh
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“By far the best, most humane and deeply-researched account we have of the most celebrated personality of the age of Enlightenment and Revolution, who was baptised a boy but thought otherwise."
Colin Jones, author of Madame de Pompadour: Images of a Mistress and The Shortest History of France.
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“Conlin does not steer away from the complexities that made d’Eon’s identity possible: political plots, celebrity culture, and forgery. All were conducive to a story of self-fashioning we need now more than ever."
M. A. Miller, Washington State University