What do women want to read? Jean Donneau de Visé, the founder and editor in chief of Le Mercure Galant, one of France’s first newspapers, was arguably the first journalist to ask this question and to recognize and capitalize upon the influence of female readers and their social networks. By including “custom content” and performing the act of listening to women, Le Mercure Galant situates itself as an intermediary, using the nouvelle as a vehicle to amplify women’s voices. These fictions, presented as true stories, depict incidents and situations that women often bore silently in real life: domestic violence, romantic betrayal, dishonor, or simply loneliness. By publishing these stories alongside its chronicle of historic events, the Mercure lends credence and prestige to depictions of the private life of anonymous individuals, exploiting the ostensibly anodyne genre of “women’s fiction” to disseminate modern ideas about women’s agency.
- Cover
- Table of Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction: Galanterie and the Art of Listening
- 1. What Women Want
- 2. Befriending the Female Reader: Tales of Female Friendship in Le Mercure Galant
- 3. Girls with Guns: Women Soldiers’ Stories in Le Mercure Galant
- 4. True Crime? Women and Violence in Le Mercure Galant
- 5. Obstinate Women and Sleeping Beauties in the Kingdom of Miracles: Conversion Stories in Le Mercure Galant’s Anti-Protestant Propaganda
- Epilogue: Buying In or Selling Out? Reading Le Mercure Galant Today
- Bibliography
- Index
- List of Illustrations
- Illustration 1. Nicolas Arnoult (1650–1722), Femme de qualité lisant le Mercure Galant (Lady Reading the Mercure galant Magazine), n.d. Etching, with burin, 29 x 34.7 cm. 5425LR. Photo: Marc Jeanneteau. © Musée du Louvre, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais/Marc Jeann
- Illustration 2. Anonymous (published by François-Gérard Jollain), Dame de qualité sur un canapé lisant Le Mercure Galant, 1688 (Lady on a Sofa Reading Le Mercure Galant). Etching, with burin, 28 x 19 cm. BnF (OA-77-PET FOL).
- Illustration 3. Anonymous, La Religion prétendue réformée aux abois (The So-Called Reformed Religion in Desperate Straits), 1685–86. BnF, QB-1 (1685/1686)-FOL
- Illustration 4. Abraham Bosse, La visite à l’accouchée (The Visit to the New Mother), 1633. BnF, http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b8403205r.
- Illustration 5. Antoine Clouzier, La Belle au bois dormant (Sleeping Beauty), from Charles Perrault, Contes de ma mère l’Oie, 1697. BnF, Rés. p Y2 263.
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