Marie-Louise Bouglé
Marie-Louise Bouglé (January 5, 1883 – June 13, 1936) was a French feminist, librarian, and archivist who developed the first feminist library in her country.
Early life
Marie-Louise Françoise Bouglé was born in Argouges on January 5, 1883.[1] She is the youngest of a family of eleven children. Her father is a brickmaker.[2] Bouglé left school at the age of ten. Orphaned at the age of 11, she joined her sister in Paris. During the day, she worked as a saleswoman. In the evening, she learned shorthand, accounting, English, Spanish, and German. She also attended lectures at popular universities. She became a secretary-accountant and cashier in a restaurant in exchange for free meals.[3]
Career
In 1910, Bouglé attended a conference facilitated by Cécile Brunschvicg. Bougle discovered feminist movements and joined the French Union for Women's Suffrage (UFSF). After World War I, she became aware of the importance of documenting, centralizing and collecting documents on feminist and pacifist movements. In 1921, Bouglé began to build a library at home. In 1923, the library consisted of 12,000 documents, and was opened to the public two evenings a week. She found the descendants of 19th century feminists. She contacts the heirs of Léon Richer and Caroline Kauffmann, obtaining bequests. She collected the personal correspondence and photos of her friends and colleagues, the manuscripts of their notes for unfinished biographies of famous women as well as their studies of women's working conditions. The reputation of the library grew. It made exchanges with other foreign feminist libraries.[2]
After her marriage in 1933, Bouglé devoted herself entirely to her work as a librarian and archivist of feminist documents. She moved from her small room in the 10th arrondissement of Paris to settle herself and her library in the 13th arrondissement. Of her motive, Bouglé said:—[4]
"The thought that all our efforts and ideas might be lost to the future worried me. I resolved to collect everything concerning present day women’s activities. From there to the past was an easy step. . . . Time pressed. Collections appeared each day and they had to be saved. I told myself that what I saved would (last forev- er). And then began the development of a pas- sion I didn’t know I had. The usefulness of my research, the growing interest in it, the success of my searches (for more books and papers), all con- tributed. At first, I planned only to save a few documents, but as days passed, I filled a room with books, pamphlets, newspapers, documents of all sorts, often rare and of great value and I found myself creating the vast library I had so yearned to have."
Bouglé rejected Marguerite Durand's donation in principle because of ideological differences between the two women. After her premature death in 1936, the l'association des amis de la bibliothèque de Marie-Louise Bouglé (Association of friends of the library of Marie-Louise Bouglé) was formed, chaired by her husband, André Mariani and run by Henriette Sauret. The honorary presidency was bestowed on Cécile Brunschvicg.[5]
Death and legacy
Marie-Louise Bouglé died in Paris on June 13, 1936.[1]
Bouglé's relatives tried to find a place to deposit the collection, but no library wanted it on the pretext that it was devoid of historical interest. In 1942, Mariani decided to bequeath the collection to the Bibliothèque nationale de France. Finally, it was the Bibliothèque historique de la ville de Paris which inherited the collection in 1946. The first inventory was made by Maïté Albistur and published in her 1982 thesis.[3] In the present day, Bouglé's 6,686 works can be consulted at the library, and the archives of feminist personalities collected by Bouglé are gradually being described on the portal of the Bibliothèque historique de la ville de Paris.[2] These fonds and the Bibliothèque Marguerite Durand preserve essential archives of the history of the first wave of feminism in France.[6]
References
- ^ a b "Death certificate no. 2775 (view 20/21) of the death register of the 13th arrondissement of Paris". archives.paris.fr (in French). Archives de Paris. Retrieved 13 January 2023.
- ^ a b c Dizier-Metz, Annie; Neveu, Valérie; Avrane, Colette (2006). Bard, Christine; Dizier-Metz, Annie; Neveu, Valérie; Fau-Vincenti, Véronique (eds.). Guide des sources de l'histoire du féminisme: de la Révolution française à nos jours (in French). Presses universitaires de Rennes. p. 156. ISBN 978-2-7535-0271-0. OCLC 1022573686.
- ^ a b Albistur, Maïté (1985). "Une nouvelle demeure de Clio ou les archives Marie-Louise Bouglé". Matériaux pour l'histoire de notre temps. pp. 27–28. doi:10.3406/mat.1985.403984. Retrieved 13 January 2023.
- ^ "Women's Archives and Women's History (Joan Wallach Scott's comments on the dedication of the Christine Dunlap Farnham Archives, October 10, 1986) No Documents, No History" (PDF). pembroke.brown.edu. 1986. p. 2. Retrieved 13 January 2023.
- ^ "Bard (C.), Les gardiennes de la mémoire". www.archivesdufeminisme.fr. Archives du Féminisme. Retrieved 13 January 2023.
- ^ Metz, Annie, "Mises en ligne", Archives du féminisme, no. 28, 2020, p. 15.
