By 1393, Christine's collection One Hundred Ballads had circulated at court, launching her career as a professional poet.
By 1393, Christine de Pizan had completed and begun circulating her Cent Ballades (One Hundred Ballads), a substantial collection of courtly lyric poetry. This work marks the effective beginning of her three-decade professional writing career.
Widowed a few years earlier after the death of her husband Étienne du Castel, Christine faced the daunting task of supporting herself, her children, and her mother without the protections typically afforded to women of her class. Turning to the pen, she drew on her courtly education and her natural facility with verse to produce poetry that quickly attracted patronage from nobles connected to the French royal court, including members of the Valois family.
The One Hundred Ballads demonstrated her mastery of established poetic forms — ballades, rondeaux, and virelais — while subtly introducing personal and reflective themes drawn from her own experience of loss and resilience. Its reception established her reputation as a skilled court poet capable of competing with, and often surpassing, her male contemporaries.
This moment is historically significant because it represents one of the earliest documented instances of a woman in medieval Europe successfully transitioning into paid literary work, laying the foundation for a career during which she would go on to produce political treatises, allegories, and works of proto-feminist advocacy that remain influential today.