Accueil 9 Traces of Françoise 9 Bibliographies

Bibliographie by dates

One hundred books published from 1940 to 2004

Reissues

2025 : Histoire de l’art et lutte des sexes (forthcoming)

Paris, Les Presses du Réel, 1er semestre 2025

introduction and comments by Fabienne Plume. Françoise, who spent a few months at the Beaux-Arts on the eve of the Second World War, retained throughout her life a taste for pictorial expression, which was even her secret garden. Fabienne Plume, teacher and feminist art critic, enthusiastically took up this book which offers a reflection on women who are all the more present in painting when they are absent as creators, supported by presentations and analyzes of works.

2024 : Le Féminisme ou la Mort (pocket)

Paris, Le Passager Clandestin, poket edition, 5 avril 2024

This paperback reissue of the title, published in 2020 by the same editors, comes a month before another must-have, Ecoféminisme Politique by Ariel Saleh, which follows on from it.

Originally published in 1974, this seminal book opens up new perspectives for ecological and feminist struggles, which Françoise tells us are destined to join in the fight against the patriarchy that, in the same movement, subjugates women and destroys the planet.

2023 : Je ne suis pas née pour mourir

Paris, Le Seuil, pocket, preface Pauline Harmange, septembre 2023

This 1982 novel tells the story of an Amazon, Thécla, who, after drinking a certain potion, goes through time and encounters great moments in history. For the first time, the myth of immortality is embodied by a woman. This prodigious adventure novel leads us to meet Alexander the Great, to the discovery of America by the Vikings, to the formidable machines designed by Leonardo da Vinci, to the war in Vendée,… up to Nazism and then to May-68.

2023 : Écologie/Féminisme – Révolution ou mutation ?

Paris, Le Passager Clandestin, preface Geneviève Pruvost, 349 pages.

Building upon the publication of Feminism or Death (1974) and her scholarly research in Women before Patriarchy (1976), Françoise d’Eaubonne provides a more complex elaboration of her vision of ecofeminism in this work.

In opposition to reformist feminism, which she describes as “mom’s feminism,” but also Marxist feminism, d’Eaubonne adds two dimensions to her analysis of the exploitation of nature and countries in the Global South: in her view, liberating oneself as a woman to the detriment of the planet and through the labor and exploitation of the most vulnerable is not really a true form of liberation. For how can it be forgotten that at the other end of the supply chain there are women bent over in fields on the other side of the world? (Geneviève Pruvost, 2022)

2023 : Le Sexocide des sorcières

Vauvert, Au diable vauvert, collection Nouvelles Lunes, preface Taous Merakchi, 109 pages.

The sexocide that Françoise d’Eaubonne talks about in this text, the treatment reserved for “witches” during the hunt that was carried out against them, was only a pretext. The sexocide that Françoise d’Eaubonne talks about in this text, the treatment reserved for “witches” during the hunt that was carried out against them, was only a pretext. Kramer and Sprenger’s Malleus Maleficarum would be treated today as the manifesto of an incel, released on the web a few hours before going to commit his mass murder in a place frequented mainly by women. (Taous Merakchi, 2023)

2023 : Contre-violence ou la résistance à l’État

Paris, Éditions Cambourakis, preface Isabelle Cambourakis, 268 pages.

Published in 1978 in a feminist publishing house, the book brings together various writings and poems by d’Eaubonne written from 1975 in response to certain events, including the death in prison of Rote Armee Fraktion (RAF) activist Ulrike Meinhof in May 1976 and that of four of her comrades in October 1977. Some of these texts were written on the spot, some were reworked several times before publication.. Reading this book raises the question of the evolutions and adjustments of d’Eaubonne’s commitment over time. (Isabelle Cambourakis, 2022)

“This book is an urgent reflection on Power and Violence. Françoise d’Eaubonne has a unique way of shooting red-hot at those who, imprisoning all thought, conflate Counter-violence with Violence. Brilliantly dismantling the hypocrisy of our society: “Non-violence is the tribute that a violent world pays to the idea of a society without violence”! Continuing her reflection, she attacks the source: power. It points to the need to destroy IT and take back OUR power, the power that everyone can exercise without limit.

Finally, she hits the bull’s eye with her final thrust, when she throws in the future: one day it will be the “Mutiny of women against the Society of Power ».” (Manon Soavi)

2022 : Un bonheur viril

Paris, Des Femmes–Antoinette Fouque, 250 pages.

Released on November 10, this third volume closes (almost) the saga of the Without our knowing the reasons, this text, written in the early 1980s, had never been published. However, as Élise Thiébaut writes in her preface, “reading it I had the impression that it was the key to the whole saga, the entry point that allowed us to finally understand it in its entirety” .

It is about the global war of the sexes from the point of view of the enemy camp, through the neurotic vision of the founder of Gynophobia (a whole program…). We can draw a parallel with the work of Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale, published in 1985.

Thanks to the IMEC who allowed us to exhume this manuscript, to Élise Thiébaut, as well as to Alain for his valuable proofreading work.. (Vincent)

2022: Les Bergères de l’Apocalypse

Paris, Des Femmes–Antoinette Fouque, 650 pages .

1978.
Contrairement à beaucoup de lectrices et lecteurs bien plus lucides que moi, ce roman, à sa sortie, me passe au-dessus de la tête ; je m’attendais à quelque chose d’aussi charmant que Le Satellite de l’Amande et suis décontenancé. Avec ma lenteur d’esprit habituelle (pour reprendre une expression que Françoise avait employée avec fausse modestie envers elle-même), il m’aura fallu attendre 2022 et cette réédition par Des Femmes-Antoinette Fouque pour découvrir ce que je considère dorénavant être un véritable chef d’œuvre. I have one small regret left: that of not having been able to tell Françoise of my overflowing enthusiasm. (Alain)

To illustrate this hallucinatory saga, we needed nothing less than Mathilde’s great and beautiful voice in one of her most poignant songs, which Françoise would have been a fan of (Vincent).

2022: Le Satellite de l’Amande

Paris, Des Femmes–Antoinette Fouque, 176 pages .

1975. I am 21 years old, I have known Françoise for several months and we have already become inseparable. Des Femmes publish Le Satellite de l’Amande , a science fiction novel set in a world of women only. I’m excited. The exploration of the small exoplanet, the philosophical questions of the narrator, the light pen of the author, everything charms my tumultuous youth. 47 years later, Des Femmes editions are republishing this book, and it is therefore with particular pleasure that I set off again to discover this d’Eaubonnesque universe. (Alain)

2021: Le Complexe de Diane

Paris, Julliard, 395 pages.

Arguing for an approach that would make it possible to reconcile “both the rational and the irrational, the intellect and the instinct”, Françoise opens the way to a process of completeness where hierarchies would finally be abolished, for the good of the humanity, and where pleasure, including sexual pleasure, would be fully honoured. And it is in the richness and depth of this thought still in gestation that this unexpected horizon that we will call ecofeminism is illuminated. (Elise)

2020: Le féminisme ou la mort

Paris, Le passager Clandestin, 331 pages.

Originally published in 1974, this seminal book opens up new perspectives for ecological and feminist struggles, which Françoise tells us are destined to join in the fight against the patriarchy that, in the same movement, subjugates women and destroys the planet. In this book which gives a nod to René Dumont’s title L’Utopia ou la Mort , Françoise announces what is now a reality: the destruction of the world by productivism and power. Today’s neoliberal capital is only the latest avatar of a multimillennial system, whose historical vision she details in Les Femmes avant le patriarcat.

2018: Écologie et Féminisme – Révolution ou mutation ?

Paris, Libre et solidaire, 233 pages.

In this book initially published in 1978 and following Le Féminisme ou la Mort , Françoise theorizes her vision of what will become a major current of ecofeminism.

This edition is enriched with a preface by Serge Latouche, which particularly does justice to her as a pioneer in the development of the idea of degrowth, and an afterword by Caroline Goldblum, which reminds us what a visionary woman Françoise was and what place she held in intellectual life for much of the previous century.

This edition only existed for a short time, as the publisher soon proved to be a failure.

(Vincent)

1933-1952, Fucking youth

1933 : Mireille, fille des montagnes

This novel, Françoise’s very first, published in an abridged version, is probably lost forever. This is the story behind it.

1932, Denoël et Stelle publishers launch a literary competition for under-13s. A minimum of 200 lines was required to get to the starting line. Françoise was 12 years old, and entered a novel that ran to 225 pages. The jury, a little taken aback, launched an investigation, discreetly questioning the parish priest: in addition to its unusual size, the text contained assumptions about the characters’ love lives that seemed hard to attribute to a child’s pen. After checking, Françoise won the competition.

This was not her first try, having completed her first 50-page novel at the age of 10, a few acts of Cornelian drama and a number of poems, for in her childhood she placed poetry above all else. Although Dostoyevsky, Zola and so many others shone brightly in her firmament at an early age, it was Rimbaud, “whose entire work in verse I soon knew by heart“, who remained for her the Indépassable: she devoted three books to him.

The child did not go unnoticed. Colette, who had published two poems she had written when she was nine, let her know that her destiny was there: she was going to be a writer, she had to be. Françoise was so overwhelmed by this encounter that her Goddess intimidated her all her life, to the point where she didn’t dare (Françoise, don’t dare!) to contact her for fear of losing precious moments of her genius. From memory, I think they only met once.

Françoise d’Eaubonne was born to literature in 1933. (Vincent)

1942: Colonnes de l’âme

Editions Lutetia, coll. Itinéraire n°1.

Handwritten preface by Joë Bousquet. The series Itinéraires under the direction of Jacques Aubenque, who wrote the afterword to this collection.

Eighteen poems by Françoise, aged 22, divided into four themes (Love, Faith, Dream, Revolt), each illustrated with a drawing by the author. (Vincent)

1943 : Littérature n° 2

Paris, Julliard, collection Sequana, (190 pages ?)

Texts and poems by : Robert Antelme, Gabriel Audisio, Jean Baudry, Pierre Béarn, André Berry, Claude Boncompain, Louise Bresson, Jeanne de Castro, Jean-Louis Curtis, Max Dietlin, Maurice Druon, Raymond Dumay, Françoise d’Eaubonne, Paul Gadenne, Kléber Haedens, Simone Jouglas, René Laporte, Jean Larcena, Henri Laville, René Lefèvre, Fernand Lequenne, Jean Loisy, Jean Massin, Jacques Mauchamp, Jean Merrien, P. van der Meulen, Raymonde Michaud, Robert Morel, Georges Neveux, Albert Ollivier, Jean Proal, C.-A. Puget, Silvio Ray, Alice Rivaz, Pierre-Maurice Richard, Henri Rode, Jean Rougeul, Claude Roy, René Tavernier, Maurice Toesca, Anne de Tourville, Claire Vallier, Nicole Vedrès.

1944: Le Cœur de Watteau

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)

1947: Comme un vol de gerfauts

Julliard, coll. Sequana, 526 pages.

Awarded the Readers’ Prize in 1947, this roman-fleuve announces themes and forms dear to Françoise that will be found throughout her novels. The sea, its buccaneers and its shipwrecks (at her request, Françoise’s ashes will be scattered by a sailboat off the coast of Morbihan), transforms the historical novel into a psychological narrative, because she thought this form was “more accessible to our modern sensibility”, as she says in the introduction. Hence our feeling, according to Élise Thiébaut, “to live adventures from the inside”, reinforced by striking, very pictorial descriptions. (Vincent)

1949: Indomptable Murcie

René Julliard, coll. Sequana, 559 pages.

While this book is dedicated to the soul of her father, it is her Spanish roots that Françoise evokes through the story of this woman, dispossessed because she was a rebel, who, at the head of her Cuadrilla, was killed by the French in front of Saragossa in 1816 during Napoleon’s war of occupation.

In this novel of love, sound and fury, the “Sangre y Fuego” part making up half of the 550 pages, Françoise perfects her art of striking description, which transports us to the heart of the action, which is described with a visual meticulousness. .

1951 : Le Complexe de Diane ; érotisme ou féminisme

Paris, Julliard, 301 pages.

In response to the male and conservative criticism leveled at Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex , Françoise d’Eaubonne, a successful young novelist, responded with this book written in a few weeks and published with much hoopla by Julliard in 1951.

In this text, Françoise rushes to the front with the ardor that has already earned her the ire of Françoise Mauriac, with whom she clashes. She attacks all the conservatisms expressed about the place of women (or, rather of “woman,” as they say) in society. And does it cleverly: psychoanalysis and communism reign supreme over the left-wing intellectual life of the time. (Vincent)

1951: Démons et merveilles

Paris, Pierre Seghers (coll. Poésie 51 n°137), 35 pages.

“A collection of very short poems, very hermetic (I constantly have to look up words and allusions) and very erudite (one expects nothing less from Françoise d’Eaubonne 🙂 ). Classical and traditional, it didn’t amaze me like some of her other (too rare) poems.
A precious read, however, for its rarity, the work and the words.”

A reader on the Net

1952: Ivelle

Julliard, 272 pages.

Ivelle is the story of a young girl of today. An ardent, restless soul, thirsting for justice… She believes she has discovered a kind of superman in Yvon, who sees himself as the founder of a new philosophy… She follows him to Paris, to the circles of Saint-Germain-des-Prés… She soon finds herself embroiled, along with her master, in a resounding murder case. (extracts from the 4th cover)

Apart from the murder story, you don’t have to be Sherlock Homes to guess that this novel is based on Françoise’s background: Yvon, wouldn’t you be Jean-Charles Pichon, the author of obscure interpretations on the history of myths? (Vincent)

1953-1961, The time to learn to live

1953: Atalante délivrée

Probably a lost work, we can only speculate as to its content. In this book, published two years after Le Complexe de Diane, we will certainly be dealing with the Greek heroine Atalanta, educated by Artemis after being abandoned by her father. She is reputed to have lived in ancient Greece, initially refusing marriage and indulging in extraordinary feats. She was the only woman to join the Argonauts to conquer the Golden Fleece alongside Jason.

We find the Atalante who could only be overtaken in the race by Hippomène’s deception evoked in Le Complexe de Diane, where Françoise expresses her attachment to this figure of the free woman. No wonder she wanted to prolong the relationship. (Vincent)

1954: La Hollandaise volante

Broadcast by Radio-Lille.

Probably lost, so we can only speculate on this Flying Dutchwoman.

The Flying Dutchman is the archetype of ghost ships, prominently featured in the tales and legends passed down and still passed down to seafarers. It represents the fatal omen to not cross on one’s voyage, because it is a boat whose crew has been cursed and condemned to wander on the waves for eternity.

It is therefore most certainly a maritime tale that Françoise proposed, like Le Gabier de Surcouf 4 years later. Note that the Dutchman has become a Dutchwoman, and it’s a safe bet that she made a captain of a pirate or corsair; it is even quite possible that the entire crew was female. A curse on the men who crossed their path! (Vincent)

1954: Une pomme rouge : mon cœur

Paris, Pierre Seghers (coll. Poésie 54 n°374), 15 pages.

Titled with a verse by Nazim Hickmet and dedicated to Henri Lefèbvre, nine poems in three sections. The first on love, its struggles and its sufferings, the second in memory of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg (four years later, Françoise will choose “Julius” as a middle name for her son). The last section, Trois poèmes pour mon Parti (Françoise was then a member of the Communist Party), contains a long poem in memory of her father to tell him what she owes him for her communist commitment. (Vincent)

1955 : Jours de chaleurs

Paris, Éditions de Paris, coll. série blonde, 249 pages.

Spain again. This sentimental novel hides under an apparent lightness memories of Françoise’s youth: the war in Spain, the Campaign in France. The novel’s heroine hides a secret, and a fiery soul not unlike that of the author. The secondary characters are probably drawn from a series of encounters made at the villa Les Pamplemousses of her Toulouse childhood after the retirada, the exodus of Spanish republicans in 1939. (Vincent)

1957: Belle humeur ou la véridique histoire de Mandrin

Paris, Le livre contemporain – Amiot-Dumond, coll. Visages de l’aventure, 202 pages.

The Ferme Générale (1680 – 1794) was a body of financiers and shareholders who, having bought the office from the King, collected the various taxes in force, with the right to keep half of them. Needless to say, the Farmers were overzealous, and infinite abuses were committed: here we have the ancestor of the international mafias and trusts, depending on which side of the law they are on.

It was against this system and its men that the highwayman Mandrin, France’s Robin-des-bois, rose to fame, ending up roasted alive in a public square in Valence in the early 1750’s. He remained in popular memory for a long time, and there are still recordings of songs celebrating his exploits.

A character, then, befitting the picaresque pen of a Françoise in her thirties, who quenches her thirst for justice and a taste for the epic in the writing of her story.

1957: Les Amours de Roméo et Juliette

Paris, Édition Rombaldi, coll. Le club de la Femme.

Here, a novel with Cyranesque accents, which is worth it for its detailed and colorful descriptions of Verona in the 15th century. Apart from that, it’s a book to support herself financially, written without passion. Living from her pen, without financial support, position or husband, may have required her to produce this work. (Vincent)

1958: Chevrette et Virginie

Hachette, coll. Bibliothèque verte n°46, 253 pages.

This first novel intended for young people is adorned with a cover whose reading could be much less innocent today than at the time. And it is the story of two adventurous and shipwrecked women that is told to us. We can even venture to think that Françoise would have done well without the character of the Chevalier de La Barre, who seems to be there to save appearances and preserve the moral purity of our dear darlings… But wouldn’t this be an anachronism or speculation on possible intentions still unconscious in the author? (Vincent)

1958: Fort des Femmes

Paris, le Livre contemporain.

Of Françoise, Mac Orlan said : “Her style is so colorful that you have to read her books with sunglasses”. What would he have said of Les Bergères de l’Apocalypse prefigured by this book? Because it is indeed about a fight of women, arms in hand: a troop of poor immigrant beggars, prostitutes and thieves who meet in the bottom of the hold of the boat in which they are fleeing poverty to building a better future in the Americas in the early 19th century. And it is not the titles of sarcastic chapters like La joie d’être mère or Le repos du guerrier that will make us doubt the intentions of the author. (Vincent)

1959 : Le sous-marin de l’espace

Paris, Éditions Gautier-Languereau, coll. Nouvelle bibliothèque de Suzette, 123 pages.

This little novel for young people is the fruit of a collaboration with two literary and scientific celebrities of the time: the writer Jean-Charles (La Foire aux cancres, 12 million copies sold) and the scientist Jacques Bergier, an SF author in his spare time.

The result is an honest adventure book, educational in its scientific postulates, where, unusually for Françoise, female characters are almost non-existent, apart from the presence of a 10-year-old girl.

The USSR found the book meritorious enough (a triumph of disinterested people working for the good of humanity and scientific materialism) for the State Educational Publishing House to translate it into 61.

1959: J’irai cracher sur vos tombes

Éditions Seghers, Paris, 220 pages.

In 1946, published by Éditions du Scorpion, a book by Vernon Sullivan bearing this title. Deemed scandalous, it was then the subject of a lawsuit brought by a Cartel for social and moral action, which revealed that its real author was Boris Vian. He will be sentenced to 15 days in prison, quickly pardoned, for insulting morality. A few days before his death, he gave Françoise permission to write a new version of his novel under this title, whose scandalous scent and the taste for American thrillers at the time made it a literary success. (Vincent)

1959: Je m’appelle Kristine

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)

1959: Le Gabier de Surcouf

Bruxelles, Éditions Brepols (Bruxelles), 138 pages.

This children’s book would have had its place in the Bibliothèque Verte. The story takes place in the Ile de France, which will become Mauritius. We find there the famous corsair, a young gabier, a young philosopher, etc., and a certain Mr. Piston, incarnation of one of Françoise’s ancestors.

Attached to her Breton and maritime roots, the author would have loved this song by Michel Tonnerre in this very beautiful interpretation by Thalie (who knows Françoise and appreciates her). Thank you to this one for allowing me to insert it here, and to Michel’s heirs. (Vincent)

1959: Les Tricheurs

Paris, Éditions Seghers, 255 pages.

Novelization of Marcel Carné’s film starring Pascale Petit, Jacques Charier and Laurent Terzieff. The book was reissued by L’Inter in 1970.

1960: Planète sans adieu

Paris, Arthème Fayard, 26 pages.

Pages 23 to 46 in a collective work. Short story from SF: time travel, a heroine, and a fun imaginative game about the influence of glaciations on the development of Homo .

If the text is of no great consequence, Françoise’s touch is there. And for her, this may have been a relaxing writing game, a recreation of her in-depth work of those years. (Vincent)

1961: Les Fiancés du Puits-Doré

Hachette, coll. Bibliothèque verte n°185, 187 pages.

Alongside Don Quixote and Cyrano de Bergerac, the honoured bandit Mandrin Belle-Humeur has his place in Françoise’s pantheon. She also dedicated a book to him in 1957. Our French Robin Hood shares the limelight here with an 11-year-old girl who displays an audacity, courage and commitment “not expected of people of her sex”, to paraphrase an 18th-century phrase.

This novel from the Bibliothèque Verte, much better written than the rest of the collection as far as I remember, is very much in line with Françoise’s other children’s books: colorful and meticulous descriptions, realistic historical context, adventures and twists in all chapters. A book quite suited to instilling a taste for literature. (Vincent)

1962-1973, I wanted to be a woman

1962: L’Amazone bleue

Hachette, coll. Bibliothèque verte n°208, 249 pages.

Françoise was very influenced by the venerable Hugo, and, in particular, his vision of the Vendée wars. This is why, while siding with the Republic, it paints a picture that is not Manichean. She also moves certain protagonists of her story from one camp to another, whose figurehead is a young woman who fights and plots, finding herself wherever the destiny of France is at stake. (Vincent)

1962: Les Plus Belles Lettres de Flaubert

Paris, Calmann-Lévy, 1962, 158 pages.

Françoise saw in Flaubert the first of the bourgeois writers (with time and money) to have introduced what she considers to be the cardinal value of his class in literature:: investment in time (time is money).

If she doesn’t forget his misogyny and the atrocious pages he wrote against the defeated Paris Commune, she gives him credit for having devoted his time to trying to tear himself away from the mediocre thinking of his time and class (whether he succeeded is another story, editor’s note), and she distinguishes him from his contemporaries in that he was in epidermal rejection of the world (unlike Sand, Balzac, Stendhal…).

Françoise, Flaubertian? Certainly not. But she recognizes its literary merits and considers it an interesting textbook case. (Vincent)

1963: La Vie des grands peintres français

Paris : Éditions du Sud, A. Michel.

Texts by Yvonne Deslandres, Françoise d’Eaubonne, Henry Certign … [et al.] ; edited by Pierre Waleffe.

Note: Awaiting annotation.

1964: Chienne de jeunesse

Paris, Julliard, 376 pages.

This first volume of his memoirs revisits his childhood, up to 1944. It opens with Green Paradise, in which the Garden plays a key role as God’s finished work on earth. It is “the natural state of a beloved child, well nourished, in immediate contact with nature“.

Then, with the move to Toulouse, came Le temps de l’ennui. The economic crisis of the ’30s pauperized the d’Eaubonne family, and the lack of everything (” Ah, those children who are always hungry! “This time of boredom was unbearable for Françoise’s ardent soul. This time of boredom was an unbearable suffocation for the ardent soul of little Françoise, who found refuge and consolation in books, writing and the spectacle of the world, some of whose bewildering specimens frequented the house, like the mythomaniac Christian, one of her main characters in Le Quadrille des Matamores. However, these restrictions did not prepare her for what was to follow after a brief happy interlude: war was declared.

In her deprived Toulouse, with parents who were not very resourceful, she experienced hunger – real hunger – and the cold (which took the life of her father and grandmother) like so many others of her generation. She received the full force of the revelation that the death camps were beyond horror. But she also experienced the Resistance, the solidarity of the poor, and her first real literary contract.

From this crucible will emerge a Françoise free of puritanical moralism and illusory propriety, determined to cry out “To the last breath, to the last rattle, to the rifle squad or the drone of the wake: fuck you!“

1964: Emily Brontë

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

Note: Awaiting annotation.

1964: Rêve de feu

Hachette, coll. le rayon fantastique n°124, 238 pages.

Note: Awaiting annotation.

1966: Honoré de Balzac

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

Note: Awaiting annotation.

1966: Les Monstres de l’été

Paris, Julliard, 464 pages.

The second part of Françoise’s “early memoirs” begins with these words:

“East Berlin, March 12, 1965 (my birthday). – My guide absolutely wants to offer to name a street in East Berlin after me. I did not deserve “this excess of honor”; if I accept it, it is because for most it will be an “indignity”. »

In this text, the author continues writing her memories of the end of the Second War in the early 1960s, after a first volume, Chienne de jeunesse, which retraced her journey from 1930 to 1945. (Alain)

1970: Éros minoritaire

Paris, André Balland, 323 pages.

In this seminal work, Françoise d’Eaubonne affirms that homosexuality, this “minority Eros,” as she describes it, has existed at all times and in all latitudes. Like heterosexuality, it is one of the two main branches of Eros. How is it then that it was blamed for perversion, disease, abnormality, even crime, according to the cultures and the centuries, after having been honored in the ancient world? (Alain)

1971 : Drôle de meurtre

Under the pseudonym Nadine de Longueval.

This novel is really very close thematically and psychologically to The Yellow Wallpaper in several aspects. The book’s protagonist, Judith, who writes the notebook found by her daughter in the opening chapters, is used by men to suit them, and loses all agency when she marries a man who has absolutely no interest in her except for his million-dollar fortune: no emotional contact, no hobbies, no bon mots, just a protagonist with in-laws who get on her nerves, her husband who talks only about himself and his novel that we guess will never be published, who interrupts her all the time, never lets her speak and discredits her at absolutely every opportunity, humiliating her at times and getting served by her all the time.

Throughout the book, we see her gradually sink into depression and madness, with all her hopes crumbling one by one. It’s hardly surprising then that society (and her daughter, before she met her) should regard her as crazy, given that she can’t express herself, can’t be happy, and is constantly attacked by everything around her, with only a small dog as a refuge.

In the novel, d’Eaubonne takes pains to explain what lies behind the “madness” of a woman seen through the eyes of others, who can finally tell her story without an outside eye or a husband trying to explain her behavior. It’s an extremely fine psychological exploration, taking us into the daily life of a woman deprived of everything, but above all of the recognition of her existence, forced to live for others and even as a bargaining chip. Even if it ends up as a bit of a hetero love story (the collection’s genre obliges) just before the last chapter, everything is credible, finely described and justified.

The last paragraph of the book is quite magnificent, in my opinion, since it marks the resumption of the story by her daughter, as both a way of inscribing the story into her own, as a legacy, but also as a memory, with the aim of rehabilitating, bringing out, making the story of a woman out of the gaze and, ultimately, with justice for all the wrongs committed against her.

Nicolas Lontel

1972 : Le Fléau social n° 2

Diary of FHAR, the Homosexual Front for Revolutionary Action, which Françoise co-founded. Several other authors.

Note: Awaiting annotation.

1972: Le Féminisme, histoire et actualité

Paris, Alain Moreau, 400 pages.

This book is a very dense essay on the history of feminism, from Antiquity to the beginnings of the American and French Women’s Liberation Movements. Françoise d’Eaubonne analyzes these “primordial historical facts” which are “phallocratism, sexism, then feminism”. Based on a very wide variety of references (psychoanalytical, anthropological, historical, literary, etc.), she analyzes both how sexist discrimination has been developed and maintained through the centuries and countries, and how much women have always tried to rebel against it – although their revolts were suppressed by various means. Incidentally, Françoise d’Eaubonne exposes the extent of the work carried out by her predecessors, retracing the cultural history of Western feminism – especially, but not only, centered on the French case – offering extracts from speeches or works and commenting on them. It is a book that tells the story of feminist revolutions, of their successive failures and repressions to to the advent of the MLF (the Feminist Liberation Movement). (Aurore)

1974-1979, Ecology/Feminism, revolution or mutation

1974 : Histoire du banditisme – tome 2

« Lacenaire – Le fiancé de la guillotine», pp.203-250 dans COLLECTIF. Histoire du banditisme Volume 2. Éditions Famot, 252 pages.

Note: Awaiting annotation.

1974 : La Drogue

F. d’Eaubonne, Claude-Paul PAJARD and Paul ULRICH. Geneva, Famot, 247 pages.

Françoise’s contribution: History and origins of drugs.

1974 : Le Féminisme ou la Mort

Paris, Pierre Horay Publisher, coll. Femmes en mouvement n°2, 374 pages.

Note: Awaiting annotation.

reissued as: Le Féminisme ou la Mort. Paris, le Passager clandestin, 2021, 332 pages.

1975: Le Satellite de l’Amande

Paris, Des Femmes , 253 pages.

All the men have disappeared. That is to say: all the males. In this novel, where they reproduce by ectogenesis (a means of reproduction that allows them to do without men), women, after having brought life back to an Earth devastated by pollution, Capital and patriarchy, set off to explore a small strange planet far from our solar system. This voyage will contain many surprises for readers of this philosophical tale. “Passionate, imperious. In fresco and in relief” (Victoria Thérame). Le Satellite de l’Amande is the first part of a saga to be continued by Les Bergères de l’apocalypse; the third part of this trilogy, unpublished until recently, was published by Des Femmes-Antoinette Fouque in November 2022. (Alain)

1977 : Lettre ouverte au docteur Hutter, médecin-directeur à l’hôpital-prison de Wittlich (RFA)

Gérard Hof et Françoise d’Eaubonne, inéditions barbares.

In 1976, after having been a witness at Françoise’s marriage to Pierre Sanna (detained in the prison of Health in Paris), Gérard Hof, Françoise’s companion, was imprisoned in the hospital-prison of Wittlich (FRG) and had to resist the particular methods applied by Dr. Hutter: experimental white torture, sensory obligation, an attempt to deconstruct the personality… Released from prison, Gérard Hof will write and publish this accusing testimony for which Françoise will write the preface. (Alain)

1977: L’Éventail de fer ou la vie de Qiu Jin

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]

1977: Les Femmes avant le patriarcat

Payot, 239 pages.

By creating ecofeminism, Françoise’s genius was not to bring a new concept: it was to connect us with an immemorial reality, that of the pre-patriarchal cultures of our geographical area, that the rationalism of the 15th century then the humanism of the Enlightenment will have tried to eradicate it in our Western culture, now at the forefront of dehumanization.

Vincent d’Eaubonne, in préface pour l’édition italienne, 2024

1978 : Contre-violence ou la Résistance à l’État

Paris, Éditions tierce, 96 pages.

Contre-violence is an eclectic, fast-paced work combining poems, political texts, articles published in feminist magazines, open letters, newspaper collages, leaflets… In this essay, Françoise d’Eaubonne refuses to condemn the use of violence a priori on moral grounds, enabling her to consider the broad spectrum of violence and its consequences, without dogmatism.

She does not end up with a compromise position, true to herself, but pleads for mutual respect for tactics and strategic choices. Having experienced and put into action acts of counter-violence, and knowing the costs involved, she is driven here by an ethical concern for the use of violence. Favoring a counter-violence that does not attack the living, she is also vigilant about contained violence, so that this violence is never transformed into revenge, individual venting, enjoyment and, ultimately, the seizure of power; so that “women’s power becomes non-power”, always at the service of diversity and the multiple (Pauline).

1978 : Écologie/Féminisme – Révolution ou mutation ?

Paris, A.T.P., 224 pages.

Écologie/féminisme : révolution ou mutation ? Takes up the main eco-feminist theses that Françoise d’Eaubonne has been developing since the beginning of the 1970s, to bring them to a point of incandescence in this work with a largely prophetic and apocalyptic tone. She sets out her conviction that it is useless to continue to think about the future in the light of eroded political analyses: the revolutionary imagination has revealed its flaws from the history of the French Revolution to that of socialism. Since 1972, she has asserted that we must move on to a mutational imagination: everything must change. Because patriarchy is, according to her, the first historical cause of all social and environmental dysfunctions, because the “masculine” ideology is an exploitative and devastating ideology, feminism and the ecological struggle are the last ramparts against the environmental apocalypse that is in the making. (Aurore)

reissued as:
– D’EAUBONNE, Françoise. Écologie et Féminisme : révolution ou mutation ? . Libre & Solidaire, May 2018, 236 pages.

1979 : Moi, Kristine, reine de Suède

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

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 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)

1979 : On vous appelait terroristes

Yverdon, Kesselring, 389 pages.

A book started following the death of Ulrike Meinhof in prison, On vous appelait terroristes offers a partial biography, fictionalized and polyphonic, of the protagonists of the German Red Army Faction. Each chapter focuses on the experience that each of them has (at the death of Katrina, Ulrike Meinhof) about the movement, its creation and the first attacks. It is the fatal spiral of counter-violence that Françoise d’Eaubonne describes. She shows how these young people, militants close to non-violence at the beginning of the novel, gradually come to the conviction that armed violence is the only effective recourse left to them to fight against State crimes.

On vous appelait terroristes em is a denunciatory title: the “urban guerrillas” are not, according to d’Eaubonne, “terrorists”, but militants of “counter-violence”. (Aurore)

1980-1995, I was not born to die

1978 : L’Indicateur du réseau

Paris, Encre, 350 pages.

The third volume of Françoise d’Eaubonne’s memoirs, L’Indicateur du réseau traces important events in her life starting from the names of the places where they took place: with humour, she speaks of a “topographical assessment”. The story advances along the alphabetical thread of station names, and we meet her successively at different ages in her life: her childhood, her family, her loved ones, the war, her first relationships – more than failed – with men, her books, her writing, her struggles. We learn in this memoir how much writing is, for her, a weapon of resistance.

This text has so far never been published in its entirety. In the still unpublished part (submitted to IMEC), Françoise, emphasizing her “fervor for this counter-literature that is Science Fiction”, specified that science fiction, “like everything that is against, rejuvenates and refreshes the old form, and that is why I choose here the name of counter-memorials”. (Aurore and Alain)

1980 : Histoire de la galanterie – tome IV Au temps des mignons du Roi

Geneva, Famot.

Most certainly collective work, and work with a financial incentive for Françoise. The title refers to the time of Henry III, where the term “mignon” definitely took on the pejorative connotation that we still know it to have. A connotation that did not exist before, this word, minion , meaning “faithful”, “servant”. Thus, the Jesuits were for a time very seriously called the “ministry of Jesus Christ”.

It was the criticisms, both from the Huguenots and from the members of the League, of the escapades and excesses of the formidable swordsmen who surrounded the young king that gave it this derogatory meaning. And insofar as these critics considered them effeminate and suspected them of homosexuality (which, at the time, could land them on the stake if one was not high enough in the hierarchy), it would be interesting to see how Françoise tackled the question of “gallantry”. (Vincent)

1982 : Je ne suis pas née pour mourir

Paris, Denoël/Gonthier, 286 pages

This 1982 novel tells the story of an Amazon, Thécla, who, after drinking a certain potion, goes through time and encounters great moments in history. For the first time, the myth of immortality is embodied by a woman. This prodigious adventure novel leads us to meet Alexander the Great, to the discovery of America by the Vikings, to the formidable machines designed by Leonardo da Vinci, to the war in Vendée,… up to Nazism and then to May-68.

(4th cover)

1983 : À la limite des ténèbres

Paris, Encre, 278 pages.

“I am an assassin. More than an assassin: a demon, a ferocious animal, a being who draws its life only from the blood of others, like vampires… I’ve killed twenty-seven people, most of them women; always in the dark, at dusk.” These are the words of the doomed hero of one of the most incredible crime stories in the annals of crime.

Françoise d’Eaubonne endeavored to paint the intimate tragedy of this schizophrenic character, the evolution between genius and madness of the dark forces of mental disorder. He will end up exhausting his own violence and become, bitterly, the spectator of his delirium.

(4th cover)

1983 : L’Amazone sombre, vie d’Antoinette Lix

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.

1985: Louise Michel la Canaque

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)

1986 : Une femme nommée Castor – Mon amie Simone de Beauvoir

Paris, Encre, 366 pages.

Shocked by the disappearance of Simone de Beauvoir in 1986, in this book Françoise insisted on describing for us the one whose The Second Sex had marked her so much. The friendship that united them, Beauvoir’s literary work and his intimate relationship with Sartre, as well as the few theoretical disagreements that the two authors may have had are delicately approached. (Alain)

From L’Indicateur du réseau , part still unpublished:

It was during the turbulent period of the various “peace in Algeria” movements (…) that I entered, for the first time, Simone de Beauvoir’s place. I have known and been with since 1947 the author of Second Sex , but I lost sight of her long enough; she will recount our reunion in La Force de l’âge.

1988 : Les Grandes Aventurières

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).

1990 : Le Scandale d’une disparition – Vie et œuvre du pasteur Doucé

Paris, Libre Arbitre, 116 pages.

Preface by Gilles Perrault.

A Protestant Baptist, Pastor Doucé founded the Center of Christ Liberator (CCL) in Paris in 1976, a space for welcoming and speaking out for believers in sexual and gender minorities. After the mysterious disappearance of the pastor in July 1990, Françoise participated with Gilles Perrault in the creation of a Committee to demand the truth about this affair. The pastor will be found murdered a few months later. (Alain)

1990 : Les Scandaleuses

Paris, Vernal/Philippe Lebaud, 234 pages.

Collection Mémoires d’autres. Note: Awaiting annotation.

1992 : Toutes les sirènes sont mortes

Paris, Editions de Magrie, 208 pages.

Collection les Nuées Volantes.

Françoise gives us a refined, deep and sensitive novel. In a lost locality in Brittany, a writer tries to escape her demons, but a very innocent investigator, more or less manipulated by her boss, comes to upset her nightmares. “Powerful, moving, with a rare sensitivity” (letter from Gilles Perrault to Françoise). (Alain)

1996-2004, The twilight fires

1997 : Féminin et philosophie

Paris, l’Harmattan, 105 pages.

In July 1994, in a letter to Alain Lezongar, Françoise wrote these few lines about the work she had just begun, which would be published three years later under the title Féminin et philosophie.

“I’ve taken “Woman and Philosophy” seriously, thanks to the book you sent me [Haine de la philosophie, Denys Mascolo]. My purpose, which is gradually becoming clearer, is in line with the observation made by Levinas, one of the greatest philosophers of the 20th century: philosophy has been “afflicted since childhood by a horror of the Other”, which has led it to the discourse of the Same; while all forms of racism are unfolding, “the Other, par excellence, is the feminine”. This confirms my point of view! Nature had to implant in the male an insatiable desire to enjoy and prolong himself to keep the male species from an exclusive homosexuality, reinforced by sexocide – the massacre of women that reappears century after century: witch-hunts, fundamentalist stonings, not to mention “serial killers”. I’m following in the footsteps of the Bergères de l’Apocalypse. Unable to kill women, patriarchy has denied, repressed, obscured “the” woman and destroyed as far as possible the trace of her works (“the sexual conflict”). It has hunted down the feminine to its very core, persecuting homosexuality as the oldest and most deeply-rooted of its desires – which, from patriarchy, would make a sterile ‘Männerbund’, itself an ever-reborn danger.”

1997 : La Liseuse et la Lyre

Paris, Les Belles Lettres, 192 pages.

In this intimate essay, Françoise returns to her passion for words. Not by navel-gazing, as René de Ceccatty rightly said in a literary review of Le Monde in 1997, but to remind us of Danièlle Sallenave’s saying: “The book does not replace anything, but nothing replaces the book”.

La Liseuse et la Lyre is a magnificent essay in which Françoise, again, touches on the universal. But in a detached and almost serene tone that we knew little about her, reminding us how wide her palette was. (Vincent)

The analogy of this too abstract passion with drug addiction inspired an author of the interwar period to denounce under this title: “This unpunished vice, reading”. How could he give this warning? With a text.

1999 : Le Sexocide des sorcières

Paris, L’Esprit Frappeur, 156 pages.

In this book, Françoise retraces the masculine obsession, since the destruction of matricentric cultures, with making the feminine disappear. “It is indeed in the Christian West, future creator of the ‘state of law’, that this dream of sexocide by the stake of witches manifested the earliest and most spectacularly. (…) It was in 1484 that the bull of Innocent VIII launched the initiative for an extermination which was to depopulate Europe from part of the ‘second sex’ for two hundred years. And the Church, for which every woman is a potential witch, will soon hand over “to the executioner’s torch the thousands of women whose guilt it invents.” (Alain)

2001 : Mémoires irréductibles – De l’entre-deux guerres à l’an 2000

Paris, Dagorno, 1135 pages.

A whole century (or almost)! This voluminous collection brings together the various volumes of Françoise d’Eaubonne’s memoirs already published at different times in her life: Chienne de jeunesse (covering the period from 1930 to 1945), Les Monstres de l’été (from 1945 to 1965), L’Indicateur du réseau (which covers different periods up to 1978), as well as a volume published here for the first time, Les Feux du crépuscule (in which the author, nearing the end of her life, looks back on the 20th century one last time).

One or two other autobiographical manuscripts have never been published so far. (Alain)

2003 : L’Évangile selon Véronique

Paris, Albin Michel, 168 pages.

The real title of this novel is “L’Évangile selon Véronique”, not “L’Évangile de Véronique” as erroneously printed on the cover.

Note: Awaiting annotation.

Bibliographie by themes

Just about every literary genre…

Philosophy and politics

1951 : Le Complexe de Diane ; érotisme ou féminisme

Paris, Julliard, 301 pages.

In response to the male and conservative criticism leveled at Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex , Françoise d’Eaubonne, a successful young novelist, responded with this book written in a few weeks and published with much hoopla by Julliard in 1951.

In this text, Françoise rushes to the front with the ardor that has already earned her the ire of Françoise Mauriac, with whom she clashes. She attacks all the conservatisms expressed about the place of women (or, rather of “woman,” as they say) in society. And does it cleverly: psychoanalysis and communism reign supreme over the left-wing intellectual life of the time. (Vincent)

1970: Éros minoritaire

Paris, André Balland, 323 pages.

In this seminal work, Françoise d’Eaubonne affirms that homosexuality, this “minority Eros,” as she describes it, has existed at all times and in all latitudes. Like heterosexuality, it is one of the two main branches of Eros. How is it then that it was blamed for perversion, disease, abnormality, even crime, according to the cultures and the centuries, after having been honored in the ancient world? (Alain)

1972 : Le Fléau social n° 2

Diary of FHAR, the Homosexual Front for Revolutionary Action, which Françoise co-founded. Several other authors.

Note: Awaiting annotation.

1972: Le Féminisme, histoire et actualité

Paris, Alain Moreau, 400 pages.

This book is a very dense essay on the history of feminism, from Antiquity to the beginnings of the American and French Women’s Liberation Movements. Françoise d’Eaubonne analyzes these “primordial historical facts” which are “phallocratism, sexism, then feminism”. Based on a very wide variety of references (psychoanalytical, anthropological, historical, literary, etc.), she analyzes both how sexist discrimination has been developed and maintained through the centuries and countries, and how much women have always tried to rebel against it – although their revolts were suppressed by various means. Incidentally, Françoise d’Eaubonne exposes the extent of the work carried out by her predecessors, retracing the cultural history of Western feminism – especially, but not only, centered on the French case – offering extracts from speeches or works and commenting on them. It is a book that tells the story of feminist revolutions, of their successive failures and repressions to to the advent of the MLF (the Feminist Liberation Movement). (Aurore)

1974 : La Drogue

F. d’Eaubonne, Claude-Paul PAJARD and Paul ULRICH. Geneva, Famot, 247 pages.

Françoise’s contribution: History and origins of drugs.

1974 : Le Féminisme ou la Mort

Paris, Pierre Horay Publisher, coll. Femmes en mouvement n°2, 374 pages.

Note: Awaiting annotation.

reissued as: Le Féminisme ou la Mort. Paris, le Passager clandestin, 2021, 332 pages.

1977 : Lettre ouverte au docteur Hutter, médecin-directeur à l’hôpital-prison de Wittlich (RFA)

Gérard Hof et Françoise d’Eaubonne, inéditions barbares.

In 1976, after having been a witness at Françoise’s marriage to Pierre Sanna (detained in the prison of Health in Paris), Gérard Hof, Françoise’s companion, was imprisoned in the hospital-prison of Wittlich (FRG) and had to resist the particular methods applied by Dr. Hutter: experimental white torture, sensory obligation, an attempt to deconstruct the personality… Released from prison, Gérard Hof will write and publish this accusing testimony for which Françoise will write the preface. (Alain)

1978 : Contre-violence ou la Résistance à l’État

Paris, Éditions tierce, 96 pages.

Contre-violence is an eclectic, fast-paced work combining poems, political texts, articles published in feminist magazines, open letters, newspaper collages, leaflets… In this essay, Françoise d’Eaubonne refuses to condemn the use of violence a priori on moral grounds, enabling her to consider the broad spectrum of violence and its consequences, without dogmatism.

She does not end up with a compromise position, true to herself, but pleads for mutual respect for tactics and strategic choices. Having experienced and put into action acts of counter-violence, and knowing the costs involved, she is driven here by an ethical concern for the use of violence. Favoring a counter-violence that does not attack the living, she is also vigilant about contained violence, so that this violence is never transformed into revenge, individual venting, enjoyment and, ultimately, the seizure of power; so that “women’s power becomes non-power”, always at the service of diversity and the multiple (Pauline).

1978 : Écologie/Féminisme – Révolution ou mutation ?

Paris, A.T.P., 224 pages.

Écologie/féminisme : révolution ou mutation ? Takes up the main eco-feminist theses that Françoise d’Eaubonne has been developing since the beginning of the 1970s, to bring them to a point of incandescence in this work with a largely prophetic and apocalyptic tone. She sets out her conviction that it is useless to continue to think about the future in the light of eroded political analyses: the revolutionary imagination has revealed its flaws from the history of the French Revolution to that of socialism. Since 1972, she has asserted that we must move on to a mutational imagination: everything must change. Because patriarchy is, according to her, the first historical cause of all social and environmental dysfunctions, because the “masculine” ideology is an exploitative and devastating ideology, feminism and the ecological struggle are the last ramparts against the environmental apocalypse that is in the making. (Aurore)

reissued as:
– D’EAUBONNE, Françoise. Écologie et Féminisme : révolution ou mutation ? . Libre & Solidaire, May 2018, 236 pages.

1990 : Le Scandale d’une disparition – Vie et œuvre du pasteur Doucé

Paris, Libre Arbitre, 116 pages.

Preface by Gilles Perrault.

A Protestant Baptist, Pastor Doucé founded the Center of Christ Liberator (CCL) in Paris in 1976, a space for welcoming and speaking out for believers in sexual and gender minorities. After the mysterious disappearance of the pastor in July 1990, Françoise participated with Gilles Perrault in the creation of a Committee to demand the truth about this affair. The pastor will be found murdered a few months later. (Alain)

1997 : Féminin et philosophie

Paris, l’Harmattan, 105 pages.

In July 1994, in a letter to Alain Lezongar, Françoise wrote these few lines about the work she had just begun, which would be published three years later under the title Féminin et philosophie.

“I’ve taken “Woman and Philosophy” seriously, thanks to the book you sent me [Haine de la philosophie, Denys Mascolo]. My purpose, which is gradually becoming clearer, is in line with the observation made by Levinas, one of the greatest philosophers of the 20th century: philosophy has been “afflicted since childhood by a horror of the Other”, which has led it to the discourse of the Same; while all forms of racism are unfolding, “the Other, par excellence, is the feminine”. This confirms my point of view! Nature had to implant in the male an insatiable desire to enjoy and prolong himself to keep the male species from an exclusive homosexuality, reinforced by sexocide – the massacre of women that reappears century after century: witch-hunts, fundamentalist stonings, not to mention “serial killers”. I’m following in the footsteps of the Bergères de l’Apocalypse. Unable to kill women, patriarchy has denied, repressed, obscured “the” woman and destroyed as far as possible the trace of her works (“the sexual conflict”). It has hunted down the feminine to its very core, persecuting homosexuality as the oldest and most deeply-rooted of its desires – which, from patriarchy, would make a sterile ‘Männerbund’, itself an ever-reborn danger.”

2018: Écologie et Féminisme – Révolution ou mutation ?

Paris, Libre et solidaire, 233 pages.

In this book initially published in 1978 and following Le Féminisme ou la Mort , Françoise theorizes her vision of what will become a major current of ecofeminism.

This edition is enriched with a preface by Serge Latouche, which particularly does justice to her as a pioneer in the development of the idea of degrowth, and an afterword by Caroline Goldblum, which reminds us what a visionary woman Françoise was and what place she held in intellectual life for much of the previous century.

This edition only existed for a short time, as the publisher soon proved to be a failure.

(Vincent)

2020: Le féminisme ou la mort

Paris, Le passager Clandestin, 331 pages.

Originally published in 1974, this seminal book opens up new perspectives for ecological and feminist struggles, which Françoise tells us are destined to join in the fight against the patriarchy that, in the same movement, subjugates women and destroys the planet. In this book which gives a nod to René Dumont’s title L’Utopia ou la Mort , Françoise announces what is now a reality: the destruction of the world by productivism and power. Today’s neoliberal capital is only the latest avatar of a multimillennial system, whose historical vision she details in Les Femmes avant le patriarcat.

2021: Le Complexe de Diane

Paris, Julliard, 395 pages.

Arguing for an approach that would make it possible to reconcile “both the rational and the irrational, the intellect and the instinct”, Françoise opens the way to a process of completeness where hierarchies would finally be abolished, for the good of the humanity, and where pleasure, including sexual pleasure, would be fully honoured. And it is in the richness and depth of this thought still in gestation that this unexpected horizon that we will call ecofeminism is illuminated. (Elise)

2023 : Contre-violence ou la résistance à l’État

Paris, Éditions Cambourakis, preface Isabelle Cambourakis, 268 pages.

Published in 1978 in a feminist publishing house, the book brings together various writings and poems by d’Eaubonne written from 1975 in response to certain events, including the death in prison of Rote Armee Fraktion (RAF) activist Ulrike Meinhof in May 1976 and that of four of her comrades in October 1977. Some of these texts were written on the spot, some were reworked several times before publication.. Reading this book raises the question of the evolutions and adjustments of d’Eaubonne’s commitment over time. (Isabelle Cambourakis, 2022)

“This book is an urgent reflection on Power and Violence. Françoise d’Eaubonne has a unique way of shooting red-hot at those who, imprisoning all thought, conflate Counter-violence with Violence. Brilliantly dismantling the hypocrisy of our society: “Non-violence is the tribute that a violent world pays to the idea of a society without violence”! Continuing her reflection, she attacks the source: power. It points to the need to destroy IT and take back OUR power, the power that everyone can exercise without limit.

Finally, she hits the bull’s eye with her final thrust, when she throws in the future: one day it will be the “Mutiny of women against the Society of Power ».” (Manon Soavi)

2023 : Écologie/Féminisme – Révolution ou mutation ?

Paris, Le Passager Clandestin, preface Geneviève Pruvost, 349 pages.

Building upon the publication of Feminism or Death (1974) and her scholarly research in Women before Patriarchy (1976), Françoise d’Eaubonne provides a more complex elaboration of her vision of ecofeminism in this work.

In opposition to reformist feminism, which she describes as “mom’s feminism,” but also Marxist feminism, d’Eaubonne adds two dimensions to her analysis of the exploitation of nature and countries in the Global South: in her view, liberating oneself as a woman to the detriment of the planet and through the labor and exploitation of the most vulnerable is not really a true form of liberation. For how can it be forgotten that at the other end of the supply chain there are women bent over in fields on the other side of the world? (Geneviève Pruvost, 2022)

2024 : Le Féminisme ou la Mort (pocket)

Paris, Le Passager Clandestin, poket edition, 5 avril 2024

This paperback reissue of the title, published in 2020 by the same editors, comes a month before another must-have, Ecoféminisme Politique by Ariel Saleh, which follows on from it.

Originally published in 1974, this seminal book opens up new perspectives for ecological and feminist struggles, which Françoise tells us are destined to join in the fight against the patriarchy that, in the same movement, subjugates women and destroys the planet.

2025 : Histoire de l’art et lutte des sexes (forthcoming)

Paris, Les Presses du Réel, 1er semestre 2025

introduction and comments by Fabienne Plume. Françoise, who spent a few months at the Beaux-Arts on the eve of the Second World War, retained throughout her life a taste for pictorial expression, which was even her secret garden. Fabienne Plume, teacher and feminist art critic, enthusiastically took up this book which offers a reflection on women who are all the more present in painting when they are absent as creators, supported by presentations and analyzes of works.

Literature essays

1943 : Littérature n° 2

Paris, Julliard, collection Sequana, (190 pages ?)

Texts and poems by : Robert Antelme, Gabriel Audisio, Jean Baudry, Pierre Béarn, André Berry, Claude Boncompain, Louise Bresson, Jeanne de Castro, Jean-Louis Curtis, Max Dietlin, Maurice Druon, Raymond Dumay, Françoise d’Eaubonne, Paul Gadenne, Kléber Haedens, Simone Jouglas, René Laporte, Jean Larcena, Henri Laville, René Lefèvre, Fernand Lequenne, Jean Loisy, Jean Massin, Jacques Mauchamp, Jean Merrien, P. van der Meulen, Raymonde Michaud, Robert Morel, Georges Neveux, Albert Ollivier, Jean Proal, C.-A. Puget, Silvio Ray, Alice Rivaz, Pierre-Maurice Richard, Henri Rode, Jean Rougeul, Claude Roy, René Tavernier, Maurice Toesca, Anne de Tourville, Claire Vallier, Nicole Vedrès.

1962: Les Plus Belles Lettres de Flaubert

Paris, Calmann-Lévy, 1962, 158 pages.

Françoise saw in Flaubert the first of the bourgeois writers (with time and money) to have introduced what she considers to be the cardinal value of his class in literature:: investment in time (time is money).

If she doesn’t forget his misogyny and the atrocious pages he wrote against the defeated Paris Commune, she gives him credit for having devoted his time to trying to tear himself away from the mediocre thinking of his time and class (whether he succeeded is another story, editor’s note), and she distinguishes him from his contemporaries in that he was in epidermal rejection of the world (unlike Sand, Balzac, Stendhal…).

Françoise, Flaubertian? Certainly not. But she recognizes its literary merits and considers it an interesting textbook case. (Vincent)

1986 : Une femme nommée Castor – Mon amie Simone de Beauvoir

Paris, Encre, 366 pages.

Shocked by the disappearance of Simone de Beauvoir in 1986, in this book Françoise insisted on describing for us the one whose The Second Sex had marked her so much. The friendship that united them, Beauvoir’s literary work and his intimate relationship with Sartre, as well as the few theoretical disagreements that the two authors may have had are delicately approached. (Alain)

From L’Indicateur du réseau , part still unpublished:

It was during the turbulent period of the various “peace in Algeria” movements (…) that I entered, for the first time, Simone de Beauvoir’s place. I have known and been with since 1947 the author of Second Sex , but I lost sight of her long enough; she will recount our reunion in La Force de l’âge.

1997 : La Liseuse et la Lyre

Paris, Les Belles Lettres, 192 pages.

In this intimate essay, Françoise returns to her passion for words. Not by navel-gazing, as René de Ceccatty rightly said in a literary review of Le Monde in 1997, but to remind us of Danièlle Sallenave’s saying: “The book does not replace anything, but nothing replaces the book”.

La Liseuse et la Lyre is a magnificent essay in which Françoise, again, touches on the universal. But in a detached and almost serene tone that we knew little about her, reminding us how wide her palette was. (Vincent)

The analogy of this too abstract passion with drug addiction inspired an author of the interwar period to denounce under this title: “This unpunished vice, reading”. How could he give this warning? With a text.

Historical novels

1947: Comme un vol de gerfauts

Julliard, coll. Sequana, 526 pages.

Awarded the Readers’ Prize in 1947, this roman-fleuve announces themes and forms dear to Françoise that will be found throughout her novels. The sea, its buccaneers and its shipwrecks (at her request, Françoise’s ashes will be scattered by a sailboat off the coast of Morbihan), transforms the historical novel into a psychological narrative, because she thought this form was “more accessible to our modern sensibility”, as she says in the introduction. Hence our feeling, according to Élise Thiébaut, “to live adventures from the inside”, reinforced by striking, very pictorial descriptions. (Vincent)

1949: Indomptable Murcie

René Julliard, coll. Sequana, 559 pages.

While this book is dedicated to the soul of her father, it is her Spanish roots that Françoise evokes through the story of this woman, dispossessed because she was a rebel, who, at the head of her Cuadrilla, was killed by the French in front of Saragossa in 1816 during Napoleon’s war of occupation.

In this novel of love, sound and fury, the “Sangre y Fuego” part making up half of the 550 pages, Françoise perfects her art of striking description, which transports us to the heart of the action, which is described with a visual meticulousness. .

1957: Belle humeur ou la véridique histoire de Mandrin

Paris, Le livre contemporain – Amiot-Dumond, coll. Visages de l’aventure, 202 pages.

The Ferme Générale (1680 – 1794) was a body of financiers and shareholders who, having bought the office from the King, collected the various taxes in force, with the right to keep half of them. Needless to say, the Farmers were overzealous, and infinite abuses were committed: here we have the ancestor of the international mafias and trusts, depending on which side of the law they are on.

It was against this system and its men that the highwayman Mandrin, France’s Robin-des-bois, rose to fame, ending up roasted alive in a public square in Valence in the early 1750’s. He remained in popular memory for a long time, and there are still recordings of songs celebrating his exploits.

A character, then, befitting the picaresque pen of a Françoise in her thirties, who quenches her thirst for justice and a taste for the epic in the writing of her story.

1958: Fort des Femmes

Paris, le Livre contemporain.

Of Françoise, Mac Orlan said : “Her style is so colorful that you have to read her books with sunglasses”. What would he have said of Les Bergères de l’Apocalypse prefigured by this book? Because it is indeed about a fight of women, arms in hand: a troop of poor immigrant beggars, prostitutes and thieves who meet in the bottom of the hold of the boat in which they are fleeing poverty to building a better future in the Americas in the early 19th century. And it is not the titles of sarcastic chapters like La joie d’être mère or Le repos du guerrier that will make us doubt the intentions of the author. (Vincent)

1982 : Je ne suis pas née pour mourir

Paris, Denoël/Gonthier, 286 pages

This 1982 novel tells the story of an Amazon, Thécla, who, after drinking a certain potion, goes through time and encounters great moments in history. For the first time, the myth of immortality is embodied by a woman. This prodigious adventure novel leads us to meet Alexander the Great, to the discovery of America by the Vikings, to the formidable machines designed by Leonardo da Vinci, to the war in Vendée,… up to Nazism and then to May-68.

(4th cover)

2003 : L’Évangile selon Véronique

Paris, Albin Michel, 168 pages.

The real title of this novel is “L’Évangile selon Véronique”, not “L’Évangile de Véronique” as erroneously printed on the cover.

Note: Awaiting annotation.

Miscellaneous novels

1933 : Mireille, fille des montagnes

This novel, Françoise’s very first, published in an abridged version, is probably lost forever. This is the story behind it.

1932, Denoël et Stelle publishers launch a literary competition for under-13s. A minimum of 200 lines was required to get to the starting line. Françoise was 12 years old, and entered a novel that ran to 225 pages. The jury, a little taken aback, launched an investigation, discreetly questioning the parish priest: in addition to its unusual size, the text contained assumptions about the characters’ love lives that seemed hard to attribute to a child’s pen. After checking, Françoise won the competition.

This was not her first try, having completed her first 50-page novel at the age of 10, a few acts of Cornelian drama and a number of poems, for in her childhood she placed poetry above all else. Although Dostoyevsky, Zola and so many others shone brightly in her firmament at an early age, it was Rimbaud, “whose entire work in verse I soon knew by heart“, who remained for her the Indépassable: she devoted three books to him.

The child did not go unnoticed. Colette, who had published two poems she had written when she was nine, let her know that her destiny was there: she was going to be a writer, she had to be. Françoise was so overwhelmed by this encounter that her Goddess intimidated her all her life, to the point where she didn’t dare (Françoise, don’t dare!) to contact her for fear of losing precious moments of her genius. From memory, I think they only met once.

Françoise d’Eaubonne was born to literature in 1933. (Vincent)

1952: Ivelle

Julliard, 272 pages.

Ivelle is the story of a young girl of today. An ardent, restless soul, thirsting for justice… She believes she has discovered a kind of superman in Yvon, who sees himself as the founder of a new philosophy… She follows him to Paris, to the circles of Saint-Germain-des-Prés… She soon finds herself embroiled, along with her master, in a resounding murder case. (extracts from the 4th cover)

Apart from the murder story, you don’t have to be Sherlock Homes to guess that this novel is based on Françoise’s background: Yvon, wouldn’t you be Jean-Charles Pichon, the author of obscure interpretations on the history of myths? (Vincent)

1953: Atalante délivrée

Probably a lost work, we can only speculate as to its content. In this book, published two years after Le Complexe de Diane, we will certainly be dealing with the Greek heroine Atalanta, educated by Artemis after being abandoned by her father. She is reputed to have lived in ancient Greece, initially refusing marriage and indulging in extraordinary feats. She was the only woman to join the Argonauts to conquer the Golden Fleece alongside Jason.

We find the Atalante who could only be overtaken in the race by Hippomène’s deception evoked in Le Complexe de Diane, where Françoise expresses her attachment to this figure of the free woman. No wonder she wanted to prolong the relationship. (Vincent)

1955 : Jours de chaleurs

Paris, Éditions de Paris, coll. série blonde, 249 pages.

Spain again. This sentimental novel hides under an apparent lightness memories of Françoise’s youth: the war in Spain, the Campaign in France. The novel’s heroine hides a secret, and a fiery soul not unlike that of the author. The secondary characters are probably drawn from a series of encounters made at the villa Les Pamplemousses of her Toulouse childhood after the retirada, the exodus of Spanish republicans in 1939. (Vincent)

1957: Les Amours de Roméo et Juliette

Paris, Édition Rombaldi, coll. Le club de la Femme.

Here, a novel with Cyranesque accents, which is worth it for its detailed and colorful descriptions of Verona in the 15th century. Apart from that, it’s a book to support herself financially, written without passion. Living from her pen, without financial support, position or husband, may have required her to produce this work. (Vincent)

1959: J’irai cracher sur vos tombes

Éditions Seghers, Paris, 220 pages.

In 1946, published by Éditions du Scorpion, a book by Vernon Sullivan bearing this title. Deemed scandalous, it was then the subject of a lawsuit brought by a Cartel for social and moral action, which revealed that its real author was Boris Vian. He will be sentenced to 15 days in prison, quickly pardoned, for insulting morality. A few days before his death, he gave Françoise permission to write a new version of his novel under this title, whose scandalous scent and the taste for American thrillers at the time made it a literary success. (Vincent)

1959: Les Tricheurs

Paris, Éditions Seghers, 255 pages.

Novelization of Marcel Carné’s film starring Pascale Petit, Jacques Charier and Laurent Terzieff. The book was reissued by L’Inter in 1970.

1971 : Drôle de meurtre

Under the pseudonym Nadine de Longueval.

This novel is really very close thematically and psychologically to The Yellow Wallpaper in several aspects. The book’s protagonist, Judith, who writes the notebook found by her daughter in the opening chapters, is used by men to suit them, and loses all agency when she marries a man who has absolutely no interest in her except for his million-dollar fortune: no emotional contact, no hobbies, no bon mots, just a protagonist with in-laws who get on her nerves, her husband who talks only about himself and his novel that we guess will never be published, who interrupts her all the time, never lets her speak and discredits her at absolutely every opportunity, humiliating her at times and getting served by her all the time.

Throughout the book, we see her gradually sink into depression and madness, with all her hopes crumbling one by one. It’s hardly surprising then that society (and her daughter, before she met her) should regard her as crazy, given that she can’t express herself, can’t be happy, and is constantly attacked by everything around her, with only a small dog as a refuge.

In the novel, d’Eaubonne takes pains to explain what lies behind the “madness” of a woman seen through the eyes of others, who can finally tell her story without an outside eye or a husband trying to explain her behavior. It’s an extremely fine psychological exploration, taking us into the daily life of a woman deprived of everything, but above all of the recognition of her existence, forced to live for others and even as a bargaining chip. Even if it ends up as a bit of a hetero love story (the collection’s genre obliges) just before the last chapter, everything is credible, finely described and justified.

The last paragraph of the book is quite magnificent, in my opinion, since it marks the resumption of the story by her daughter, as both a way of inscribing the story into her own, as a legacy, but also as a memory, with the aim of rehabilitating, bringing out, making the story of a woman out of the gaze and, ultimately, with justice for all the wrongs committed against her.

Nicolas Lontel

1983 : À la limite des ténèbres

Paris, Encre, 278 pages.

“I am an assassin. More than an assassin: a demon, a ferocious animal, a being who draws its life only from the blood of others, like vampires… I’ve killed twenty-seven people, most of them women; always in the dark, at dusk.” These are the words of the doomed hero of one of the most incredible crime stories in the annals of crime.

Françoise d’Eaubonne endeavored to paint the intimate tragedy of this schizophrenic character, the evolution between genius and madness of the dark forces of mental disorder. He will end up exhausting his own violence and become, bitterly, the spectator of his delirium.

(4th cover)

1992 : Toutes les sirènes sont mortes

Paris, Editions de Magrie, 208 pages.

Collection les Nuées Volantes.

Françoise gives us a refined, deep and sensitive novel. In a lost locality in Brittany, a writer tries to escape her demons, but a very innocent investigator, more or less manipulated by her boss, comes to upset her nightmares. “Powerful, moving, with a rare sensitivity” (letter from Gilles Perrault to Françoise). (Alain)

Science fiction and myths

1954: La Hollandaise volante

Broadcast by Radio-Lille.

Probably lost, so we can only speculate on this Flying Dutchwoman.

The Flying Dutchman is the archetype of ghost ships, prominently featured in the tales and legends passed down and still passed down to seafarers. It represents the fatal omen to not cross on one’s voyage, because it is a boat whose crew has been cursed and condemned to wander on the waves for eternity.

It is therefore most certainly a maritime tale that Françoise proposed, like Le Gabier de Surcouf 4 years later. Note that the Dutchman has become a Dutchwoman, and it’s a safe bet that she made a captain of a pirate or corsair; it is even quite possible that the entire crew was female. A curse on the men who crossed their path! (Vincent)

1960: Planète sans adieu

Paris, Arthème Fayard, 26 pages.

Pages 23 to 46 in a collective work. Short story from SF: time travel, a heroine, and a fun imaginative game about the influence of glaciations on the development of Homo .

If the text is of no great consequence, Françoise’s touch is there. And for her, this may have been a relaxing writing game, a recreation of her in-depth work of those years. (Vincent)

1964: Rêve de feu

Hachette, coll. le rayon fantastique n°124, 238 pages.

Note: Awaiting annotation.

1975: Le Satellite de l’Amande

Paris, Des Femmes , 253 pages.

All the men have disappeared. That is to say: all the males. In this novel, where they reproduce by ectogenesis (a means of reproduction that allows them to do without men), women, after having brought life back to an Earth devastated by pollution, Capital and patriarchy, set off to explore a small strange planet far from our solar system. This voyage will contain many surprises for readers of this philosophical tale. “Passionate, imperious. In fresco and in relief” (Victoria Thérame). Le Satellite de l’Amande is the first part of a saga to be continued by Les Bergères de l’apocalypse; the third part of this trilogy, unpublished until recently, was published by Des Femmes-Antoinette Fouque in November 2022. (Alain)

2022 : Un bonheur viril

Paris, Des Femmes–Antoinette Fouque, 250 pages.

Released on November 10, this third volume closes (almost) the saga of the Without our knowing the reasons, this text, written in the early 1980s, had never been published. However, as Élise Thiébaut writes in her preface, “reading it I had the impression that it was the key to the whole saga, the entry point that allowed us to finally understand it in its entirety” .

It is about the global war of the sexes from the point of view of the enemy camp, through the neurotic vision of the founder of Gynophobia (a whole program…). We can draw a parallel with the work of Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale, published in 1985.

Thanks to the IMEC who allowed us to exhume this manuscript, to Élise Thiébaut, as well as to Alain for his valuable proofreading work.. (Vincent)

2022: Le Satellite de l’Amande

Paris, Des Femmes–Antoinette Fouque, 176 pages .

1975. I am 21 years old, I have known Françoise for several months and we have already become inseparable. Des Femmes publish Le Satellite de l’Amande , a science fiction novel set in a world of women only. I’m excited. The exploration of the small exoplanet, the philosophical questions of the narrator, the light pen of the author, everything charms my tumultuous youth. 47 years later, Des Femmes editions are republishing this book, and it is therefore with particular pleasure that I set off again to discover this d’Eaubonnesque universe. (Alain)

2022: Les Bergères de l’Apocalypse

Paris, Des Femmes–Antoinette Fouque, 650 pages .

1978.
Contrairement à beaucoup de lectrices et lecteurs bien plus lucides que moi, ce roman, à sa sortie, me passe au-dessus de la tête ; je m’attendais à quelque chose d’aussi charmant que Le Satellite de l’Amande et suis décontenancé. Avec ma lenteur d’esprit habituelle (pour reprendre une expression que Françoise avait employée avec fausse modestie envers elle-même), il m’aura fallu attendre 2022 et cette réédition par Des Femmes-Antoinette Fouque pour découvrir ce que je considère dorénavant être un véritable chef d’œuvre. I have one small regret left: that of not having been able to tell Françoise of my overflowing enthusiasm. (Alain)

To illustrate this hallucinatory saga, we needed nothing less than Mathilde’s great and beautiful voice in one of her most poignant songs, which Françoise would have been a fan of (Vincent).

2023 : Je ne suis pas née pour mourir

Paris, Le Seuil, pocket, preface Pauline Harmange, septembre 2023

This 1982 novel tells the story of an Amazon, Thécla, who, after drinking a certain potion, goes through time and encounters great moments in history. For the first time, the myth of immortality is embodied by a woman. This prodigious adventure novel leads us to meet Alexander the Great, to the discovery of America by the Vikings, to the formidable machines designed by Leonardo da Vinci, to the war in Vendée,… up to Nazism and then to May-68.

Historical essays

1963: La Vie des grands peintres français

Paris : Éditions du Sud, A. Michel.

Texts by Yvonne Deslandres, Françoise d’Eaubonne, Henry Certign … [et al.] ; edited by Pierre Waleffe.

Note: Awaiting annotation.

1974 : Histoire du banditisme – tome 2

« Lacenaire – Le fiancé de la guillotine», pp.203-250 dans COLLECTIF. Histoire du banditisme Volume 2. Éditions Famot, 252 pages.

Note: Awaiting annotation.

1977: Les Femmes avant le patriarcat

Payot, 239 pages.

By creating ecofeminism, Françoise’s genius was not to bring a new concept: it was to connect us with an immemorial reality, that of the pre-patriarchal cultures of our geographical area, that the rationalism of the 15th century then the humanism of the Enlightenment will have tried to eradicate it in our Western culture, now at the forefront of dehumanization.

Vincent d’Eaubonne, in préface pour l’édition italienne, 2024

1979 : On vous appelait terroristes

Yverdon, Kesselring, 389 pages.

A book started following the death of Ulrike Meinhof in prison, On vous appelait terroristes offers a partial biography, fictionalized and polyphonic, of the protagonists of the German Red Army Faction. Each chapter focuses on the experience that each of them has (at the death of Katrina, Ulrike Meinhof) about the movement, its creation and the first attacks. It is the fatal spiral of counter-violence that Françoise d’Eaubonne describes. She shows how these young people, militants close to non-violence at the beginning of the novel, gradually come to the conviction that armed violence is the only effective recourse left to them to fight against State crimes.

On vous appelait terroristes em is a denunciatory title: the “urban guerrillas” are not, according to d’Eaubonne, “terrorists”, but militants of “counter-violence”. (Aurore)

1980 : Histoire de la galanterie – tome IV Au temps des mignons du Roi

Geneva, Famot.

Most certainly collective work, and work with a financial incentive for Françoise. The title refers to the time of Henry III, where the term “mignon” definitely took on the pejorative connotation that we still know it to have. A connotation that did not exist before, this word, minion , meaning “faithful”, “servant”. Thus, the Jesuits were for a time very seriously called the “ministry of Jesus Christ”.

It was the criticisms, both from the Huguenots and from the members of the League, of the escapades and excesses of the formidable swordsmen who surrounded the young king that gave it this derogatory meaning. And insofar as these critics considered them effeminate and suspected them of homosexuality (which, at the time, could land them on the stake if one was not high enough in the hierarchy), it would be interesting to see how Françoise tackled the question of “gallantry”. (Vincent)

1990 : Les Scandaleuses

Paris, Vernal/Philippe Lebaud, 234 pages.

Collection Mémoires d’autres. Note: Awaiting annotation.

1999 : Le Sexocide des sorcières

Paris, L’Esprit Frappeur, 156 pages.

In this book, Françoise retraces the masculine obsession, since the destruction of matricentric cultures, with making the feminine disappear. “It is indeed in the Christian West, future creator of the ‘state of law’, that this dream of sexocide by the stake of witches manifested the earliest and most spectacularly. (…) It was in 1484 that the bull of Innocent VIII launched the initiative for an extermination which was to depopulate Europe from part of the ‘second sex’ for two hundred years. And the Church, for which every woman is a potential witch, will soon hand over “to the executioner’s torch the thousands of women whose guilt it invents.” (Alain)

2023 : Le Sexocide des sorcières

Vauvert, Au diable vauvert, collection Nouvelles Lunes, preface Taous Merakchi, 109 pages.

The sexocide that Françoise d’Eaubonne talks about in this text, the treatment reserved for “witches” during the hunt that was carried out against them, was only a pretext. The sexocide that Françoise d’Eaubonne talks about in this text, the treatment reserved for “witches” during the hunt that was carried out against them, was only a pretext. Kramer and Sprenger’s Malleus Maleficarum would be treated today as the manifesto of an incel, released on the web a few hours before going to commit his mass murder in a place frequented mainly by women. (Taous Merakchi, 2023)

Autobiographies

1964: Chienne de jeunesse

Paris, Julliard, 376 pages.

This first volume of his memoirs revisits his childhood, up to 1944. It opens with Green Paradise, in which the Garden plays a key role as God’s finished work on earth. It is “the natural state of a beloved child, well nourished, in immediate contact with nature“.

Then, with the move to Toulouse, came Le temps de l’ennui. The economic crisis of the ’30s pauperized the d’Eaubonne family, and the lack of everything (” Ah, those children who are always hungry! “This time of boredom was unbearable for Françoise’s ardent soul. This time of boredom was an unbearable suffocation for the ardent soul of little Françoise, who found refuge and consolation in books, writing and the spectacle of the world, some of whose bewildering specimens frequented the house, like the mythomaniac Christian, one of her main characters in Le Quadrille des Matamores. However, these restrictions did not prepare her for what was to follow after a brief happy interlude: war was declared.

In her deprived Toulouse, with parents who were not very resourceful, she experienced hunger – real hunger – and the cold (which took the life of her father and grandmother) like so many others of her generation. She received the full force of the revelation that the death camps were beyond horror. But she also experienced the Resistance, the solidarity of the poor, and her first real literary contract.

From this crucible will emerge a Françoise free of puritanical moralism and illusory propriety, determined to cry out “To the last breath, to the last rattle, to the rifle squad or the drone of the wake: fuck you!“

1966: Les Monstres de l’été

Paris, Julliard, 464 pages.

The second part of Françoise’s “early memoirs” begins with these words:

“East Berlin, March 12, 1965 (my birthday). – My guide absolutely wants to offer to name a street in East Berlin after me. I did not deserve “this excess of honor”; if I accept it, it is because for most it will be an “indignity”. »

In this text, the author continues writing her memories of the end of the Second War in the early 1960s, after a first volume, Chienne de jeunesse, which retraced her journey from 1930 to 1945. (Alain)

1978 : L’Indicateur du réseau

Paris, Encre, 350 pages.

The third volume of Françoise d’Eaubonne’s memoirs, L’Indicateur du réseau traces important events in her life starting from the names of the places where they took place: with humour, she speaks of a “topographical assessment”. The story advances along the alphabetical thread of station names, and we meet her successively at different ages in her life: her childhood, her family, her loved ones, the war, her first relationships – more than failed – with men, her books, her writing, her struggles. We learn in this memoir how much writing is, for her, a weapon of resistance.

This text has so far never been published in its entirety. In the still unpublished part (submitted to IMEC), Françoise, emphasizing her “fervor for this counter-literature that is Science Fiction”, specified that science fiction, “like everything that is against, rejuvenates and refreshes the old form, and that is why I choose here the name of counter-memorials”. (Aurore and Alain)

2001 : Mémoires irréductibles – De l’entre-deux guerres à l’an 2000

Paris, Dagorno, 1135 pages.

A whole century (or almost)! This voluminous collection brings together the various volumes of Françoise d’Eaubonne’s memoirs already published at different times in her life: Chienne de jeunesse (covering the period from 1930 to 1945), Les Monstres de l’été (from 1945 to 1965), L’Indicateur du réseau (which covers different periods up to 1978), as well as a volume published here for the first time, Les Feux du crépuscule (in which the author, nearing the end of her life, looks back on the 20th century one last time).

One or two other autobiographical manuscripts have never been published so far. (Alain)

Fictional biographies

1944: Le Cœur de Watteau

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)

1959: Je m’appelle Kristine

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)

1964: Emily Brontë

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

Note: Awaiting annotation.

1966: Honoré de Balzac

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

Note: Awaiting annotation.

1977: L’Éventail de fer ou la vie de Qiu Jin

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]

1979 : Moi, Kristine, reine de Suède

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

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 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)

1983 : L’Amazone sombre, vie d’Antoinette Lix

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.

1985: Louise Michel la Canaque

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)

1988 : Les Grandes Aventurières

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).

Poetry

1942: Colonnes de l’âme

Editions Lutetia, coll. Itinéraire n°1.

Handwritten preface by Joë Bousquet. The series Itinéraires under the direction of Jacques Aubenque, who wrote the afterword to this collection.

Eighteen poems by Françoise, aged 22, divided into four themes (Love, Faith, Dream, Revolt), each illustrated with a drawing by the author. (Vincent)

1951: Démons et merveilles

Paris, Pierre Seghers (coll. Poésie 51 n°137), 35 pages.

“A collection of very short poems, very hermetic (I constantly have to look up words and allusions) and very erudite (one expects nothing less from Françoise d’Eaubonne 🙂 ). Classical and traditional, it didn’t amaze me like some of her other (too rare) poems.
A precious read, however, for its rarity, the work and the words.”

A reader on the Net

1954: Une pomme rouge : mon cœur

Paris, Pierre Seghers (coll. Poésie 54 n°374), 15 pages.

Titled with a verse by Nazim Hickmet and dedicated to Henri Lefèbvre, nine poems in three sections. The first on love, its struggles and its sufferings, the second in memory of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg (four years later, Françoise will choose “Julius” as a middle name for her son). The last section, Trois poèmes pour mon Parti (Françoise was then a member of the Communist Party), contains a long poem in memory of her father to tell him what she owes him for her communist commitment. (Vincent)

Youth

1958: Chevrette et Virginie

Hachette, coll. Bibliothèque verte n°46, 253 pages.

This first novel intended for young people is adorned with a cover whose reading could be much less innocent today than at the time. And it is the story of two adventurous and shipwrecked women that is told to us. We can even venture to think that Françoise would have done well without the character of the Chevalier de La Barre, who seems to be there to save appearances and preserve the moral purity of our dear darlings… But wouldn’t this be an anachronism or speculation on possible intentions still unconscious in the author? (Vincent)

1959 : Le sous-marin de l’espace

Paris, Éditions Gautier-Languereau, coll. Nouvelle bibliothèque de Suzette, 123 pages.

This little novel for young people is the fruit of a collaboration with two literary and scientific celebrities of the time: the writer Jean-Charles (La Foire aux cancres, 12 million copies sold) and the scientist Jacques Bergier, an SF author in his spare time.

The result is an honest adventure book, educational in its scientific postulates, where, unusually for Françoise, female characters are almost non-existent, apart from the presence of a 10-year-old girl.

The USSR found the book meritorious enough (a triumph of disinterested people working for the good of humanity and scientific materialism) for the State Educational Publishing House to translate it into 61.

1959: Le Gabier de Surcouf

Bruxelles, Éditions Brepols (Bruxelles), 138 pages.

This children’s book would have had its place in the Bibliothèque Verte. The story takes place in the Ile de France, which will become Mauritius. We find there the famous corsair, a young gabier, a young philosopher, etc., and a certain Mr. Piston, incarnation of one of Françoise’s ancestors.

Attached to her Breton and maritime roots, the author would have loved this song by Michel Tonnerre in this very beautiful interpretation by Thalie (who knows Françoise and appreciates her). Thank you to this one for allowing me to insert it here, and to Michel’s heirs. (Vincent)

1961: Les Fiancés du Puits-Doré

Hachette, coll. Bibliothèque verte n°185, 187 pages.

Alongside Don Quixote and Cyrano de Bergerac, the honoured bandit Mandrin Belle-Humeur has his place in Françoise’s pantheon. She also dedicated a book to him in 1957. Our French Robin Hood shares the limelight here with an 11-year-old girl who displays an audacity, courage and commitment “not expected of people of her sex”, to paraphrase an 18th-century phrase.

This novel from the Bibliothèque Verte, much better written than the rest of the collection as far as I remember, is very much in line with Françoise’s other children’s books: colorful and meticulous descriptions, realistic historical context, adventures and twists in all chapters. A book quite suited to instilling a taste for literature. (Vincent)

1962: L’Amazone bleue

Hachette, coll. Bibliothèque verte n°208, 249 pages.

Françoise was very influenced by the venerable Hugo, and, in particular, his vision of the Vendée wars. This is why, while siding with the Republic, it paints a picture that is not Manichean. She also moves certain protagonists of her story from one camp to another, whose figurehead is a young woman who fights and plots, finding herself wherever the destiny of France is at stake. (Vincent)

The foreign editions

Françoise’s worldwide presence…

Italian

2024 : Le donne prima del patriarcato

Rome, Nova Delphi Libri, preface Vincent d’Eaubonne, avril 2024

Not currently republished in French, this 1976 book is inserted between Feminism or Death from 1974 and Ecology/Feminism, revolution or mutation? from 1978.

Because “Capitalism is only the point of the iron that hurts us, its handle is lost in the mists of time“, Françoise relies on the history of myths and the anthropological knowledge of her time to try to locate the moment when the patriarchy took over.

2024 : Il sessosidio delle streghe

Prospero Editore, Milan, mars 2024

After translating Feminism or Death, Sara Marchesi, collection director at Prospero Editore, decided to make this text by Françoise known in Italy.

The sexocide that Françoise d’Eaubonne talks about in this text, the treatment reserved for “witches” during the hunt that was carried out against them, was only a pretext. It was a perfect trick, suited to the era in which these events took place, to justify the torture and murder of women. Kramer and Sprenger’s Malleus Maleficarum would be treated today as the manifesto of an incel, released on the web a few hours before going to commit his mass murder in a place frequented mainly by women. (Taous Merakchi, 2023)

2022 : Il Femminismo o la Morte

Milan, Prospero Editore, 432 pages.

Released November 10, 2022, with a critical introduction by Sara Marchesi.

According to shared opinion, this introduction is very good. Sara Marchesi, beyond a careful reading of Françoise, shares with her sources of reflection, those which are not the most obvious to detect at first glance in Françoise’s work, such as the philosopher Simone Weil for example.

It is not impossible that, in the future, Sara Marchesi will meet Françoise again. After reading this introduction, we hope so. (Vincent)

1978 : le donne prima del patriarcato

felina editrice, 1976, 246 pages

In this Italian version of Les femmes avant le patriarcat, a note on the first page reads: “questo libro e diretto solo alle donne” (this book is for women only).

By creating ecofeminism, Françoise’s genius was not to bring a new concept: it was to connect us with an immemorial reality, that of the pre-patriarchal cultures of our geographical area, that the rationalism of the 15th century then the humanism of the Enlightenment will have tried to eradicate it in our Western culture, now at the forefront of dehumanization.

Vincent d’Eaubonne, in préface pour l’édition italienne, 2024

1974 : Geni del Crimine

Geneva, Ferni Editions

A 250-page work that could be unpublished in French, signed by Nouailles and d’Eaubonne.

1961 : Sputero’ sulle vostre tombe

Éditions Cino Del Duca, 258 pages.

A translation of J’irai cracher sur vos tombes. In 1946, Éditions du Scorpion published a book by Vernon Sullivan with this title. Deemed scandalous, it was the subject of a lawsuit brought by a Cartel for Social and Moral Action, which revealed that its real author was Boris Vian. He will be sentenced to 15 days in prison, quickly pardoned, for insulting morality. A few days before his death, he gave Françoise permission to write a new version of his novel under this title, whose scandalous scent and the taste for American thrillers at the time made it a literary success. (Vincent)

1959 : I Bari

Editions Lerici, Milan.

Italian translation of Les Tricheurs, Françoise’s novelization of Marcel Carné’s film starring Pascale Petit, Jacques Charrier and Laurent Terzieff.

English

2022: Feminism or Death

USA, Verso Books.

The incendiary French feminist work that defined ecofeminism is now available in English for the first time.

Originally published in French in 1974, radical feminist Françoise d’Eaubonne’s work takes stock of the situation of women around the world and asserts that what is at stake in feminist struggles is not equality, but life or death – for human beings and the planet. In this wide-ranging manifesto, d’Eaubonne first proposed a political vision of ecofeminism, arguing that the patriarchal system’s claim on women’s bodies and the natural world destroys both, and that feminism and environmentalism must bring about a new “mutation” – an overthrow not just of male power but of the power system itself. As d’Eaubonne prophesied, “the planet placed under the sign of the feminine will green up for all”. (Source: Verso Books, translated with DeepL and corrected)

1980: Feminism or death

Schocken Books, USA

Partial translation by Ynestra King in New French Feminisms: An Anthology of Françoise’s best-known book, Le féminisme ou la mort, in which she uses the neologism ecofeminism for the first time.

1960: The Cheats

Ace Books, New York

American translation of Les Tricheurs, Françoise’s novelization of Marcel Carné’s film starring Pascale Petit, Jacques Charrier and Laurent Terzieff.

1951: A flight of a Falcon

McGraw-Hill Book Company.

Traduction anglaise par Naomi Walford de Comme un vol de gerfauts. Prix des Lecteurs en 1947, ce long roman annonce les thèmes et les formes chers à Françoise, qui reviendront tout au long de son œuvre romanesque. La mer, ses flibusteries et ses naufrages (à sa demande, les cendres de Françoise seront dispersées par un voilier au large du Morbihan), et surtout le roman historique transformé en récit psychologique, parce qu’il lui semblait que cette forme était « plus accessible à notre sensibilité moderne », comme elle le dit dans l’introduction. D’où notre sentiment, selon Élise Thiébaut, « de vivre les aventures de l’intérieur », renforcé par des descriptions saisissantes et très imagées. (Vincent)

Translated with DeepL.com (free version)

Spanish

2024: Feminismo o muerte

Verso Libros, 218 pages

Le Féminisme ou la Mort in Spanish is presented as follows:

In this work, originally published in French in 1974, radical feminist Françoise d’Eaubonne analyzes the situation of women around the world and asserts that the feminist struggle is not about equality, but about life and death, for human beings and for the planet. In this vast manifesto, d’Eaubonne for the first time proposes an ecofeminist policy: the patriarchal system acts on women as it acts on nature, destroying everything. Ecofeminism must therefore bring about a new “mutation”, an overthrow not just of male power, but of the power system itself. As Françoise d’Eaubonne herself prophesied, “the planet, put to feminine use, would green up for all”.

2019 : El Sexocidio de la brujas

Barcelone, Incorpore.

Le sexocide des sorcières in Spanish

Françoise d’Eaubonne published Le sexocide des sorcières in 1999, after fifty years of writing and political commitment, having introduced the word phallocrate into the French language (1971) and introduced the concept of ecofeminism (1978). (In fact 1974) (Source Incorpore)

From the moment that men took control of fertility (through agriculture) and fecundity (through reproduction), the land and women were exploited according to a logic of productivism. For five thousand years, patriarchy has been responsible for ecological disaster and the enslavement of women. The “witch-hunt” is yet another episode in this domination which, for two centuries, persecuted and massacred women simply because they were women and not witches (Source: Incorpore).
*** Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version) ***

End of contract in August 2024 with this publisher.

1963 : Todos somos culpables

Grupo Planeta, Circulo de Lectores.

Spanish translation by Fernando Gutierrez of Les Tricheurs, Françoise’s novelization of Marcel Carné’s film starring Pascale Petit, Jacques Charrier and Laurent Terzieff.

1962 : Cristina de Suecia

Éditions Renacimiento, 283 pages

Spanis version tranlated by Leonor T. de Paiz de Je m’appelle Kristine.

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)

German

1978 : Feminismus und « Terror »

Trikont

Another German translation, by Regina Weiss, of Françoise’s best-known book, Le féminisme ou la mort, in which she uses the neologism ecofeminism for the first time. Several editions followed.

The title is very, very strange…

1978 : Das Geheimnis des Mandelplaneten

Allemagne, Rowohlt, coll. rororo / neue frau, 126 pages.

Alleman translation of Le satellite de l’Amande, several reprints

All the men have disappeared. That is to say: all the males. In this novel, where they reproduce by ectogenesis (a means of reproduction that allows them to do without men), women, after having brought life back to an Earth devastated by pollution, Capital and patriarchy, set off to explore a small strange planet far from our solar system. This voyage will contain many surprises for readers of this philosophical tale. “Passionate, imperious. In fresco and in relief” (Victoria Thérame). Le Satellite de l’Amande is the first part of a saga to be continued by Les Bergères de l’apocalypse; the third part of this trilogy, unpublished until recently, was published by Des Femmes-Antoinette Fouque in November 2022. (Alain)

1975 : Feminismus oder Tod; Thesen zur Ökologiedebatte

PMünchen, Verlag, collection Frauenoffensive

Gina Giert’s first German translation of Françoise’s best-known book, Le féminisme ou la mort, in which she uses the neologism ecofeminism for the first time. Several editions followed.

1959 : Rebell Rimbaud

Publisher unknown, Germany

A translation of La vie Passionnée d’Arthur Rimbaud by Karl August Horst.

Note pending redaction.

1950 : Unbezähmbar schlägt das Herz

Unknown publisher

German translation of Indomptable Murcie. Although this book is dedicated to the soul of her father, it is her Spanish roots that Françoise evokes through the story of this woman dispossessed because she was a rebel, who, at the head of her cuadrilla, was killed by the French in front of Saragossa in 1816, during Napoleon’s war of occupation.

In this novel full of love, noise and fury, of which the “Sangre y Fuego” section accounts for half the 550 pages, Françoise perfects her art of vivid description, plunging us into the heart of the action, described with picturesque meticulousness.

Other languages

2024 : Mandelsolens Planet (Le satellite de l’Amande)

Copenhague, Danemark, Karsten Editor

This Almond Satellite, particularly dear to my heart, was reissued by Des Femmes – Antoinette Fouque in 2022. The exploration of the small exoplanet, the philosophical questions of the narrator, the light pen of the author, everything had charmed me in this novel so original. It is therefore with great pleasure that we announce its translation into Danish for 2024. (Alain)

2019 : El Sexocidi de les bruixes

Barcelone, Incorpore Editore

Le soxocide des sorcières in Catalan

Françoise d’Eaubonne published Le sexocide des Sorcières in 1999, after fifty years of writing and political commitment, having introduced the word phallocrate into the French language in 1971 and the concept of ecofeminism in 1978. (In fact 1974). (Source Incorpore)

1980 : Kønskampens historie

Publisher unknown.

Norwegian translation by Merete Aaberg of Les femmes avant le patriarcat, the title meaning something like The history of the gender struggle (DeepL).

By creating ecofeminism, Françoise’s genius was not to bring a new concept: it was to connect us with an immemorial reality, that of the pre-patriarchal cultures of our geographical area, that the rationalism of the 15th century then the humanism of the Enlightenment will have tried to eradicate it in our Western culture, now at the forefront of dehumanization.

Vincent d’Eaubonne, in préface pour l’édition italienne, 2024

1968 : Život na Šopen

Nauka i Izkustvo, Sofia, Bulgarie

Slovak translation of La vie de Chopin. Note: Awaiting annotation.

1963 : ha-Nokhlim

Hadar hotsa’at sefarim, editor ? Tel-Aviv ?

Hebrew translation of Les Tricheurs, Françoise’s novelization of Marcel Carné’s film starring Pascale Petit, Jacques Charrier and Laurent Terzieff.

1959 : Os Trapaceiros

Publisher unknown.

Portuguese (or Brazilian?) translation of Les Tricheurs, Françoise’s novelization of Marcel Carné’s film starring Pascale Petit, Jacques Charrier and Laurent Terzieff.

1959 : Storbyungdom

Edition Overs.

Norwegian translation by Per Aamot, under the title Jeunesse urbaine, of Les Tricheurs, Françoise’s novelization of Marcel Carné’s film starring Pascale Petit, Jacques Charrier and Laurent Terzieff.