Women Authors’ Reputation and Its Relationship to Money Earned: Some Early French Writers as Examples

Abstract

This chapter focuses in the first place on the reception of a number of French female authors, more particularly on the ways in which they were presented in biobibliographical compilations which were quite numerous in France in the late eighteenth and in the nineteenth century. While presenting some of their authors, compilers like Joseph de La Porte (Histoire Littéraire des Femmes Françaises, 1769), Boudier de Villemert (Notice Alphabétique des Femmes Célèbres en France, 1779) and Henri Carton (Histoire des Femmes Écrivains de la France, 1886) did consider the financial aspects of the writers’ careers. Their remarks are not to be considered as simple information: they are full of suggestions which, for a selection of these women (eighteenth century), are looked at more closely here and compared – as far as possible – to information available in other documents (private correspondence of the authors, paratexts). This chapter also compares what is being said about the money earned, invested or lost, to other elements in the presentation of the author’s work and personality: what kind of role this particular aspect played in the process of (de)canonization of the authors concerned?