Resurrecting Jane de La Vaudère

This engrossing narrative recounts the story of Jane de La Vaudère (née Jeanne Scrive), a prolific and celebrated writer of France’s Belle Époque. Interweaving biography and literary analysis, Sharon Larson examines the ways in which La Vaudère adapted her persona to shifting literary trends and readership demands—and how she created and profited from controversy.

Relatively unknown today, La Vaudère published more than forty novels, poetry collections, and dramatic works as well as hundreds of shorter pieces. A controversial figure who was known as a plagiarist, La Vaudère attracted the attention of the public and of her peers, who caricatured her in literary periodicals and romans à clef. Most notably, La Vaudère claimed to have written the Rêve d’Egypte pantomime, whose 1907 production at the Moulin Rouge featured a kiss between Missy and Colette that led to riots and the suspension of future performances. Larson scrutinizes the ensemble of these various media constructions, privileging La Vaudère’s self-representation in interviews and advertisements, and brings to light her agency in creating an image that captivated public attention and boosted sales of her writings.

This volume probes the quandaries of scholarship seeking to responsibly recover lost female voices and makes a long-overdue contribution to nineteenth-century French literary studies.

“Just as other female authors have now passed into the canon of nineteenth-century French studies because of the work of pioneering scholars to reclaim them, so too does Larson lay down the foundations for a broader appreciation of La Vaudère in her study. This book goes a long way towards demystifying the figure of Jane de La Vaudère and will provide an invaluable springboard for future scholars.”—Mathew Rickard, Nineteenth-Century French Studies

“This monograph lays the groundwork and sets the benchmark. It will be a must-read for anyone working not only on this writer, but on women writers at the fin de siècle in general and on Colette and the Rêve d’Egypte in particular. It is a most welcome enrichment of the field.”—Melanie Hawthorne, H-France

“A biography of Jane de La Vaudère has been long overdue. La Vaudère has been unjustly forgotten by literary history, like many women of her generation who defied societal conventions by participating in a world largely dominated by male figures. Her great body of work is fascinating and original, as it reflects the important social, scientific, feminist, and literary discourses and ideas that agitated French society in the late nineteenth century. In this regard, Resurrecting Jane de La Vaudère is a much-needed and welcomed contribution.”—Geneviève De Viveiros, author of “Au courant de la plume”: Zola et l’épistolaire

Sharon Larson is Associate Professor of French at Christopher Newport University.

List of Illustrations

Acknowledgements

Introduction

1. The Makings of a Biography

2. Becoming Jane de La Vaudère

3. La Vaudère’s Plagiarism: Subversion Through Copy

4. The Plagiarized Plagiarist: Missy de Morny, Colette, and the Scandal of Rêve d’Égypte

5. Deciphering La Vaudère’s “Fierce” Feminism

6. Driving into the Future: The Château de La Vaudère and Continued Legacies

Notes

Jane de La Vaudère: A Comprehensive Bibliography

Works Cited

Index

Download a PDF sample chapter here: Introduction

Biography & Memoir

Literary Studies

           Romance Studies