Julliard, 354 pages.

Written between 1942 and 1943, this novel is a succession of detailed images and earthy dialogues. The misery of the times that Françoise navigates as best she can finds an echo in the descriptions that she makes of popular life under Louis XIV. A whole world of craftsmen, shopkeepers and rank and file soldiers comes to life in these pages against the backdrop of the life and paintings of Antoine Watteau. Women are also very present there, especially Morena, who embodies a hard-won and preserved independence. This novel, which is deftly constructed in a masterly way, is surprisingly mature for a 22-year-old author. (Vincent)

In this book, Françoise shows not only the poet, but above all the man Rimbaud in all the ups and downs of his life, with his vices, his eruptions of character. Rimbaud’s genius shines through, with his eruptive temperament, his absolute loyalty to himself, his mockery of all bourgeois morality, and his transformation from poet to pure merchant, interested only in making money in Abyssinia as an arms dealer.

Éditions Albin Michel, Paris, 285 pages. Reissue titled Moi, Kristine, reine de Suède, 1979

The Memoirs of Hadrian , Marguerite Yourcenar’s monumental work published 7 years earlier, can only come to mind when reading Françoise’s novel. And it is not the transparent clues that she left that will invalidate this observation. One could think of a stylistic imitation, when it is necessary to see there what these two great authors shared: a real knowledge of the Greeks and the Latins.

Knowledge that Françoise puts at the service of her purpose which, always, will have been to say: Women ! Be proud to be! It is thanks to this statement that I will have quite naturally, from my childhood readings, been led to consider that an epic hero could just as well be a heroine.

With Kristine from Sweden, Françoise paints a historical figure that lives up to her intentions. Friend and correspondent of the greatest intellectual and scientific figures of her century, linchpin of the Treaty of Westphalia, adventurous and combative, diplomat and peacemaker, Queen Kristine was unquestionably one of the most important figures in Europe of her time. (Vincent)

Paris, Seghers, 349 pages.

” 1896 ; un dur hiver noircit les vitres de Paris ; la neige a couvert les trottoirs d’un drap épais, puis a fondu ; on attend à nouveau qu’elle tombe. Chaque bec de gaz crache sa flamme jaune au cœur d’une plume de paon, irisation des gouttelettes de la brume.

Rue Descartes, au carreau d’un garni, un papillon rouge vacille, tremble et rouvre ses ailes ; c’est une lampe à pétrole dont la mèche noircissante va mourir. Le vieux malade est tombé sur le carrelage ébréché. Sa chemise de nuit, crasseuse, est remontée sur ses cuisses comme sur le dessin de Daumier Les Massacres de la rue Transnonnain. Il grogne et gémit ; il jure. Une de ses jambes, énorme et raide, a la couleur bleue d’une seule monstrueuse ecchymose. Il halète. Il griffe les carreaux avec ses ongles. Il crie : «Eugénie ! » Il se tait. Son souffle bruyant accompagne l’agonie de la lampe. Un fiacre qui passe ébranle les vitres de la maison et un chant d’ivrogne tourne le coin de la rue, vacille, puis disparaît.

Il est étendu par terre, dans sa chemise sale, avec son crâne chauve et sa barbe emmêlée, et il pousse encore quelques jurons; puis il gémit comme un enfant qui rêve : «Philomène… » Il se tait. “

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” Entre les mains qui le bordent et resserrent les couvertures autour de lui, le vieux se sent filer, tomber dans un trou immense ; une brèche de lumière s’ouvre à travers cette nuit : c’est le pâle soleil de Metz sur les vertes esplanades, à l’heure où sonne la diane étouffée des casernes ; la nuit va descendre, et le petit Paul tend son front ravi aux lèvres de la plus belle des femmes :

—Bonsoir, maman, dit-il. “

Paris, Les Editions du Sud, 345 pages

This biographical novel begins with a 3-page introduction, Le 19ème siècle et le triomphe de la bourgeoisie, which ends as follows:

“Certainly, from 1830 to the first decades of our 20th century, this was the golden age of the bourgeoisie, with that unpleasant nightmare of the Commune, a desperate attempt by the “possessed” class to shake off its yoke; this was the era, of which ours has retained so much nostalgia in the heart of its middle classes, when the Franc was as firm as a rock, and consequently patriarchal morality, severe, prudish and fixed. Where the little blue flower is cultivated all the more because gold is obtained at the price of sweat and blood…”.

“A lively, lively tone… A book full of anecdotes.” (Nouvelles littéraires)

Paris, Éditions du Sud, Albin Michel, 335 pages

“Just as Jacobin and Napoleonic expansion had tended to liberate peoples before giving them a new discipline, the School of Five broke the chains with which Italian and Classical tyranny had burdened the realm of music; in this sense Balakirev and his satellites, Borodin, Moussorgsky, César Cui, Rimsky-Korsakov were the heirs … of the French Berlioz and the Frenchized Hungarian Franz Lizt. The former was dead: the latter recognized his own. …

…Franz Lizt represents the second generation of musical Romanticism. …Freedom of interpretation, a legacy of 19th-century Romantic individualism, is an achievement due to Lizt and him alone. “

Pierre Seghers, coll. Poètes d’aujourd’hui n°120, 190 pages.

Note: Awaiting annotation.

Variétés, Paris, Éditions du Sud.

Note: Awaiting annotation.

Textes et documents, Paris, Éditions du Sud et A. Michel.

Note: Awaiting annotation.

Paris, Flammarion, 283 pages.

In her preface to Histoire de l’art et lutte des sexes (History of Art and the Battle of the Sexes), Fabienne Dumont highlights the wealth of historical anecdotes that accompany the portraits of Madame Récamier by David and Ingres. There is no doubt that Françoise drew on the documentation she had compiled over the previous decade for her Germaine de Staël.

Françoise’s closeness, even familiarity, with the characters and the era is striking, giving the impression that she is not working as a historian and biographer, but rather as a contemporary and neighbor.

For she had not forgotten the reception Napoleon had given to some of her great-aunts. Bringing him important papers from the Isle of France, from where they had been forced into exile when it became Mauritius after being taken by the English, they had asked for an exchange, a subsidy to set up a school for girls. This did not please the despot at all, who, professing that “women belong to men as fruit trees belong to gardeners,” considered any education for women that might distract them from their assigned role to be pernicious, and therefore rejected the request.

Françoise recounts her destiny in a style as loud and furious as Germaine de Staël’s life itself. The daughter of Necker and the greatest writer of the early 19th century, whom the Emperor detested, she never bowed down to him, and paid the price for it. The portrait is rich, nuanced, and scholarly, without ever veering into hagiography, but restoring her to her rightful place in literature and politics, just as she did for Christine of Sweden: one of the first, since she saved Talleyrand (who hastened to betray her), obtained concessions from the inflexible Fouché, and had the ear of the greatest European princes, while producing a body of work that would astonish Hugo, Chateaubriand, and so many others with its intelligence.

That is why I don’t think the title is entirely appropriate: more than a witness to her century, she was a major player, even inspiring an anti-Napoleonic coalition of northern European states. And Napoleon was not mistaken when he had her watched day and night and was able to recite her schedule while fighting his battles on the other side of Europe.

One last question remains: why was this political and philosophical genius not included in my studies, which were cluttered with so many writers of far lesser importance?

Paris, Éditions du Sud and Albin Michel, coll. « Vies et Visages », 112 pages.

Note: Awaiting annotation.

Paris, Flammarion, 331 pages.

Note: Awaiting annotation.

reissued under:
– Vie d’Isabelle Eberhardt. J’ai Lu, 1968.
– Isabelle Eberhardt. Paris, J’ai Lu, 1992, 409 pages.

Paris, Jean-Claude Simoën, 349 pages.

reissued as:
– D’EAUBONNE, Françoise. L’Éventail de fer ou la vie de Qiu Jin. Encre, 1984, 349 pages.

“Across a sumptuous and miserable China, shaken by incessant civil wars, Qiu Jin, a great feminist, commits herself totally to the side of Sun-Yat-Sen, who was to liberate her country from the imperial shackles. By turns studious young woman, wife and mother, but also poet, terrorist and tireless activist, she was beheaded at the beginning of the 20th century. L’Éventail de Fer is the fresco-like account of the real-life struggle of this young Chinese woman with an extraordinary destiny”. [4° de couverture]

Encre, collection Mémoire des Femmes, 273 pages (Reissue, original published under the title Je m’appelle Kristine, 1959).

Marguerite Yourcenar’s monumental work, Les mémoires d’Hadrien, inevitably comes to mind when reading Françoise’s novel. And it is not the transparent clues that she left that will invalidate this observation. One could think of a stylistic imitation, when it is necessary to see there what these two great authors shared: a real knowledge of the Greeks and the Latins.

Knowledge that Françoise puts at the service of her purpose which, always, will have been to say: Women ! Be proud to be! It is thanks to this statement that I will have quite naturally, from my childhood reading, been led to consider that an epic hero could just as well be a heroine.

With Kristine from Sweden, Françoise paints a historical figure that lives up to her intentions. Friend and correspondent of the greatest intellectual and scientific figures of her century, linchpin of the Treaty of Westaphalia, adventurous and combative, diplomat and peacemaker, Queen Kristine was unquestionably one of the most important figures in the Europe of her time. (Vincent)

Encre, Paris, 264 pages.

Françoise traces the complex destiny of Madame Mao Zedong, from teenage actress to power-hungry woman who was “the first woman in the world to rule over so many men”. Between the courageous revolutionary and the bloody imprincess, her story is told in the first person.

Paris, Encre, 309 pages.

Daughter of an Alsatian innkeeper and former Napoleonic grenader, Antoinette Lix (1839-1909) received an unconventional education in horseback riding and weapons handling. She took part in the Polish uprising against the Russian occupiers and, on her return to France, tried in vain to join the regular army, at a time when it was out of the question for a woman to join the armed forces as a combatant. So she joined the Corps-Francs de Lamarche, where she led her men in the defense of the Vosges against the Germans during the 1870 war. In recognition of her commitment and feats of arms, she was awarded a Sword of Honor, now on display at the Armies Museum.

An extraordinary destiny worthy of Françoise’s pen and her sense of epic.

Paris, Encre, 238 pages.

1873. Louise Michel, sentenced to deportation, arrives in New Caledonia, where she will stay for seven years. In this island which was not yet conquered by the military, her fortitude allowed her to find great joy in the luxuriant nature and especially among the Kanak people, she being the only one to support them in 1878 when the former communards joined forces with the jailers to exterminate them. Under the pen of Françoise, Louise finds a life worthy of the exceptional woman she was. (Vincent)

Paris, Vernal/Philippe Lebaud, 234 pages.

For a long time, the term “adventuress” was reserved for what were known as demi-mondaines, i.e. those who, considering marriage to be a wholesale business, chose the retail trade to escape a destiny of submission and reproduction and conquer control of their own destiny.

This is not the type of adventuress we’re talking about here. Françoise gives us a dozen portraits of women who, fighting and battling both on land and at sea, forged a name for themselves and a political or military destiny. Others still, a spiritual destiny. Some of these women were the subject of separate books in Françoise’s oeuvre, such as Isabelle Eberhardt (La Couronne de sable) and Antoinette Lix (L’Amazone sombre).