Present-day study of early French women’s writing is greatly indebted to the abbé Joseph de La Porte who published an inventory of “literary women”: a five-volume compilation entitled Histoire littéraire des femmes françaises (1769). It contains some 300 authors’ names. Its presentation is, however, of a rather subjective nature which incited Fortunée Briquet to publish her own inventory as a kind of answer: the Dictionnaire historique, littéraire et bibliographique des Françaises et des étrangères naturalisées en France, connues par leurs écrits (1804). Her list is to be consulted at the SIEFAR-site. The women figuring in both inventories have been integrated into the database WomenWriters. Most of them are still in need of research and study.

For some others, articles are being prepared or adapted for this new presentation of the website. The first publications will concern (hyperlinks are now to records in database WomenWriters):

Antoinette de Salvan (1638-1730)
Françoise de Graffigny (1695-1758)
Jeanne Leprince de Beaumont (1711-1780)
Marie-Jeanne Riccoboni (1714-1792)
Madame de Beaumer (1720-1766)
Mademoiselle Fauque (1721-1773)
George Sand (1804-1876)

SvD, April 2007