Anne François Mars
French Actress
1779 – 1847 A.D.

Anne François Mars, a French actress. Her parents were actors, and she made her first appearance on the stage in her childhood.

She made no decided impression upon the public until her personation [sic] in 1803 of a deaf and dumb girl in the Abbé do l’Epée, soon after which she assumed the position of the first comic actress of her day.

For thirty years she was without a rival in genteel comedy, every new part attempted by her being a success down to that of Mlle. de Belle-Isle in Dumas’s drama of that name, produced in 1839, in which, although sixty years of age, she appeared like a young woman of twenty.

Although some of her greatest triumphs were achieved in modern plays, she greatly preferred the dramas of the old school, especially the comedies of Molière. Her personations [sic] of the fashionable lady or coquette of the old regime are among the most cherished traditions of the French stage.

Mlle. Mars amassed a considerable fortune, and after taking leave of the stage in 1841 sent the latter years of her life in retirement, where she received visits from persons  eminent in literature and the arts.

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Reference: Famous Women; An Outline of Feminine Achievement Through the Ages With Life Stories of Five Hundred Noted Women By Joseph Adelman. Copyright, 1926 by Ellis M. Lonow Company.