Gabrielle Anne de Courtiras, vicomtesse de Saint-Mars (1804–1872)

Gabrielle Anne Cisterne de Courtiras married the vicomte (later marquis) du Pouilloue de Saint-Mars. The marriage proved unhappy, and the couple formally separated in 1835. She then had to support herself and wrote as a journalist until 1839, when she began writing novels, and proved to be extremely prolific and successful. She took the pen name Countess Dash, supposedly after a favorite dog; but also wrote under the male pseudonym Jacques Reynaud for some nonfiction works. In her Mémoires des autres, she describes the personality of her friend Alexandre Dumas père, some of whose books she's said to have had a hand in. Her other works included La pomme d'Eve (1853), Les galanteries de la cour de Louis XV (1861), and Les aventures d'une jeune mariée (1870).