Reading Signatures: Female Authorship and Revolutionary Law in France, 1750-1850

Abstract

IT IS WIDELY ACCEPTED by historians, literary critics, and legal scholars alike that the law on literary property passed by the National Convention on 19 July 1793 gave legal definition to the modern notion of the author in France.' This law, proclaimed as nothing less than a declaration of the rights of genius by the revolutionary legislators, recognized the author, rather than God, as the sole originator of his work, and as a consequence, consecrated his authority to determine the fate of his work as an inviolable property rather than a privilege granted by the grace of the King: This legal right to authorial selfdetermination forms the basis of commercial publishing in France to this date. But what about the female author? Did 1793 mark a crucial legal turning point in the history of female authorship and publishing as well? Despite the recent renewal of interest in the history of authorship and publishing in early modern and modern France, there has been surprisingly little research devoted to the legal status of women writers and their relations to their works. While we have a few precious studies of the legal situations of individual French women writers, there has as yet been no systematic effort to-assess the extent to which the legal realities ensuing from the revolutionary laws on authorship and literary property differed for men and women32 The recent four volume