An Inventory of Manuscripts, Transcripts, and Research Notes at the Harry Ransom
Center
Creator:
Harry Ransom Center
Title
Ouvrage sur les Femmes: Manuscripts, Transcripts, and Research
Notes
Dates:
1745-1987
Extent:
8 boxes (3.78 linear feet)
Abstract:
The research notes, drafts, and fair copies written by Jean
Jacques Rousseau and Louise Marie Madeline Fontaine Dupin were sold at a series of
auctions
held between 1951 and 1958, from which the Ransom Center acquired a major portion
of Madame Dupin's
work.
Jean Jacques Rousseau, one of the most influential French philosophical writers of
the 18th
century, was born in Geneva, Switzerland in 1712. After a peripatetic and largely
self-taught youth, Rousseau arrived in Paris in 1742. He quickly attracted the attention
of
Denis Diderot and was asked to contribute to the Encyclopédie. During the years between 1750 and 1762 he wrote those
works of social and philosophical commentary for which he is best remembered-- Discourse on the Arts and Sciences, The New Eloise, Emile, and
The Social Contract. In the latter year he fled France following his
condemnation by the Parlement of Paris. Rousseau settled briefly in Britain under
the
protection of David Hume, but following their bitter disagreement he departed and
returned
to France in 1767. He spent his last years of increasing eccentricity writing his
autobiographical Confessions. J. J. Rousseau died in Paris in
1778.
Louise Marie Madeline Fontaine Dupin was born in Paris on 28 October 1706 to Marie
Anne
Armande de Fontaine and the banker Samuel Bernard. In 1722 she married Claude Dupin;
they
had one son, Jacques Armand, born in 1727. Dupin's success as a "tax farmer" and government official enabled him to buy the chateau of Chenonceaux
in 1733. At Chenonceaux Madame Dupin cultivated a salon of artists and writers, and,
by the
mid-1740s, formed the intention of writing the history of womankind. With the assistance
of
Rousseau she labored on this task for several years, before abandoning it about 1750.
Madame
Dupin continued to live at Chenonceaux following her husband's death in 1769, dying
there
shortly after dictating her will on 20 November 1799.
Dr. Leland Thielemann was a professor of French at the University of Texas at Austin
for 20
years preceding his 1984 retirement. After receiving a Ph.D. from Columbia University
in
1950 he taught at the University of California at Los Angeles before coming to Austin.
Dr.
Thielemann specialized in 18th century French intellectual history and the Enlightenment,
publishing in such journals as the Modern Language Quarterly and
Diderot Studies. Before his death on 24 December 1987 Dr. Thielemann
spent considerable time transcribing and organizing the Ransom Center's Rousseau materials.
Scope and Contents
In the years between 1745 and 1749 Jean Jacques Rousseau was employed by Louise Marie
Madeline Dupin as a research assistant on her ambitious project to delineate in print
the
history of women. After years of labor by Rousseau and Madame Dupin her Ouvrage sur les Femmes was shelved, unfinished. The research notes,
drafts, and fair copies written by Rousseau and his employer were stored at the chateau
of
Chenonceaux, essentially forgotten, until their sale at a series of auctions held
between
1951 and 1958. As a result of these sales the Ransom Center acquired a major portion
of Madame Dupin's
stillborn work.
During the late 1970s and early 1980s the late Dr. Leland Thielemann of the University
of
Texas at Austin worked extensively with the Rousseau-Dupin archive. As a result of
his
efforts the Center's holdings have been brought into line with the arrangement suggested
by
Anicet Sénéchal in his 1963 bibliographical article in the Annales de la Société J.-J. Rousseau.
The archive of the Ouvrage sur les Femmes comprises
three series: Draft and Notes (3 boxes), Dr. Thielemann's Transcriptions and Comments
(2
boxes), and Dr. Thielemann's Research Notes (3 boxes).
The Draft and Notes series consists of abstracts from published works used as source
materials, draft sections or chapters of the projected work, and fragments and copies
of
various sorts. This section is largely in the hand of Rousseau, with corrections and
additions by Dupin. Leland Thielemann's Transcriptions and Comments, the second series,
presents his renderings of the original manuscript material, with bibliographical
comments
and some conjectures. The final series embraces Dr. Thielemann's rough notes and early
attempts to organize the Ransom Center's Rousseau-Dupin archive.
Series Descriptions
Index Terms
Persons
Dupin, Louise Marie Madeline Fontaine,
1707-circa 1800
