Madame Therese deals with the topics of the French Revolution and the resulting social upheaval, destruction caused by war, the formation of the first French Republic, the ideals of justice and equality among classes, and friendship and devotion. The book was first published in French in 1863.

Erckmann-Chatrian was the name used by French authors Emile Erckmann (1822-1899) and Alexandre Chatrian (1826-1890), nearly all of whose works were jointly written. Both Erckmann and Chatrian were born in the departement of Moselle, in the Lorraine region in the extreme north-east of France. They specialised in military fiction and ghost stories in a rustic mode, applying to the Vosges mountain range and the Alsace-Lorraine region techniques inspired by story-tellers from the Black Forest. Lifelong friends who first met in the spring of 1847, they finally quarreled during the mid-1880s, after which they did not produce any more stories jointly. During 1890 Chatrian died, and Erckmann wrote a few pieces under his own name. Many of Erckmann-Chatrian's works were translated into English by Adrian Ross.