Mélanie de Salignac

Mélanie de Salignac (Marennes, Charente-Maritime, 19 January 1744 –1766) was a young French woman whose achievements in the face of her disability - blindness - were mentioned in the accounts of Diderot. She was born blind long before the invention of Braille in 1829, but taught herself to read using cut out card letters and achieved much more through her sense of touch. Diderot wrote about her achievements in his "Addition to the Letter on the Blind". She was born at the fr:Château de Mons (Charente-Maritime), the daughter of financier Pierre Vallet de Salignac (d.1760) and Marie-Jeanne Élisabeth Volland, elder sister of de:Sophie Volland. Her older brother was the politician fr:Nicolas-Thérèse Vallet de Salignac.