Description
Book SynopsisIn the Footsteps of Flora Tristan is the first ever study devoted to Jules Puech (1879–1957), and is a double biography that examines his life’s work on Flora Tristan (1803–1844), feminist and socialist. It begins by examining newly found press reports of Flora Tristan during her lifetime and subsequently, then positions Puech’s discovery of her, as a postgraduate student in Paris in the 1900s. It continues with an account of how he embarked on the first in-depth biography published in 1925. Puech was unmatched in his expertise as a writer on Flora Tristan having discovered her papers through his numerous political connections and having become a historian of Proudhon’s legacy on the international aspirations of the labour movement. Together with his wife Marie-Louise Puech, née Milhau (1876-1966), suffragist feminist, he was a militant in the early twentieth-century pacifist movement that advocated international arbitration. His research on Flora Tristan was enriched by his other projects but was thwarted by the wars of 1914–1918 and 1940–1945. The circumstances of the long gestation of Puech's biography are drawn from his letters and papers, hitherto unseen. The correspondence curated brings a new understanding to the multi-faceted nature of Puech’s activism and rate of progress in the publication of his findings on his subject, Flora Tristan.
Trade Review‘This is an important biography which fully complements other works in the Studies in Labour History series, prompting us to recognize Flora Tristan as a transnational activist whose ideas and published works addressed issues that mattered to feminists and socialists in Britain as well as Europe.’
Joan Allen,
Labour History Review‘[
In the Footsteps of Flora Tristan] contains such a wealth of research and analysis that Máire Fedelma illuminates, whole areas of socialist, feminist, and labour history. It should shape all future studies on Flora Tristan.’
Andrew Coates,
Chartist ‘Following an original approach, the book intertwines two biographies… Máire Cross powerfully demonstrates how Puech himself traced the footsteps of Flora Tristan's presence in the memory of the labor movement, how he saved her legacy too.’ Isabelle Matamoros, Clio. Femmes, Genre, Histoire (translated from French)
‘The story told in Máire Cross’s book is a fascinating one… it highlights both the feminism and the socialism of Flora Tristan, and the difficulty of making people accept the fact that these two aspects are inseparable. It makes Jules Puech known. It should, one hopes, contribute to the development of studies on his favourite subjects.’ Michèle Audin, Modern & Contemporary France
Table of Contents
- Acknowledgements
- List of illustrations
- Introduction: A political biography
- Chapter 1: Tracing the origin of Flora Tristan studies
- Chapter 2: Flora Tristan in the press
- Chapter 3: The whirlwind effect of Flora Tristan
- Chapter 4: The curious circumstances of Flora Tristan’s death
- Chapter 5: War and peace for the Flora Tristan biographer
- Chapter 6: The Long wait
- Conclusion: In the footsteps of Flora Tristan and Jules-Louis Puech
- Bibliography
- Index
