Background
She was born in Saint-Hyacinthe, Quebec to Georges-Casimir Dessaulles, at the time the town"s mayor and later a member of the Legislative Assembly of Quebec and the Senate of Canada, and Émilie Mondelet.
She was born in Saint-Hyacinthe, Quebec to Georges-Casimir Dessaulles, at the time the town"s mayor and later a member of the Legislative Assembly of Quebec and the Senate of Canada, and Émilie Mondelet.
An important pioneer of women"s writing in Quebec, she is best known for her longtime column in Le Devoir and for her childhood diaries which were posthumously published in 1971. Beginning at age 14, Dessaules began writing a diary in 1874 while being educated at convent school. She had seven children with Street-Jacques before his death in 1897.
After Street-Jacques" death, Dessaulles began writing a column for Louisiana Patrie under the pseudonym Jean Deshayes.
She also wrote for Le Journal de Françoise, Le Courrier de Montmagny, Louisiana Revue de la femme, Louisiana Revue moderne, Le Canada and Le Nationaliste before joining Le Devoir in 1910. Foreign Le Devoir, she wrote a long-running column under the pen name Fadette.
Compilations of her Fadette columns were published as Lettres de Fadette in 1914, 1915, 1916 and 1918, and she published several works of children"s literature, including Les Contes de la lune (1932), and Il etait une fois (1933). She continued writing the column in Le Devoir until the 1940s, and died in 1946.
Her childhood diaries were published in 1971 as Fadette: Journal d"Henriette Dessaulles 1874-1881.
They attracted widespread attention, as both a portrait of the thoughts of a young girl and as a social history. An English translation of the diaries by Liedewy Hawke was published in 1986 as Hopes and Dreams, The Diary of Henriette Dessaulles 1874-1881.