This paper discusses the “gendering” of the fiction of female authors like Madame de Scudéry and Madame de Lafayette as it was perceived in Restoration England. It is one of the great paradoxes of the early modern reception of fiction that texts which were to become so emblematic of women’s fiction as Madeleine de Scudéry’s romances and Madame de Lafayette’s short fiction, were first published, both in France and England, as having been written by a male author. French women authors had a complex relationship to authorship and refused to own up to their productions, although their masks were transparent to some. After retracing the publishing history of Clelie and La Princesse de Cleves in France, this paper aims at questioning whether this fiction produced by women was in any way “gendered” in its English reception, or not, and whether it was presented particularly suited for a female readership. I will then discuss the strategies of publication of the English translators and booksellers, and try to establish whether the sex of the author had any bearing in the reception of French fiction by women.