Background
Louise Lab was born at Lyons about 1525, the daughter of a rich ropemaker, named Charley or Charlin.
Louise Lab was born at Lyons about 1525, the daughter of a rich ropemaker, named Charley or Charlin.
At the siege of Perpignan Louise Lab is said to have fought on horseback in the ranks of the Dauphin, afterwards Henry II.
About 1550 the poet Olivier de Magny passed through Lyons on his way to Italy in the suite of Jean d'Avanson, the French envoy to the Holy See.
There seems little doubt that her passion for Magny inspired her eager, sincere verse, and the elegies probably express her grief at his first absence.
A second short visit to Lyons was followed by a second longer absence.
Magny's influence is shown more decisively in her Sonnets, which, printed in.
During his second visit to Italy Magny had apparently consoled himself, and Louise, despairing of his return, encouraged another admirer, Claude Rubys, when her lover returned unexpectedly.
Louise dismissed Rubys, but Magny's jealousy found vent in an ode addressed to the Sire Aymon (Ennemond), which ruined her reputation; while Rubys, angry at his dismissal, avenged himself later in his Ihstoire veritable de Lyons (1573).
This scandal struck a fatal blow at Louise's position.
Her works include, besides the Elegies and Sonnets mentioned, a prose Debat de folie et d'amour (translated into English by Robert Greene in 1608).
Some time before 1551 Louise Lab married Ennemond Perrin, a ropemaker.