873 - AUDOUARD, Olympe Félicité de Jouval, known as Olympe (1832–1890), French writer, traveler, and feminist. Correspondence consisting of 8 signed autograph letters and one autograph note addressed, in particular, to her publisher Dentu. Paris, Saint Petersburg, and Gréoux-Les-Bains, undated. Approximately 22½ pages, mostly in-4.

AUDOUARD, Olympe Félicité de Jouval, known as Olympe (1832–1890), French writer, traveler, and feminist. Correspondence consisting of 8 signed autograph letters and one autograph note addressed, in particular, to her publisher Dentu. Paris, Saint Petersburg, and Gréoux-Les-Bains, undated. Approximately 22½ pages, mostly in-4. Fascinating correspondence from this great feminist regarding her work, her travels, her struggles, etc., from which we will quote only one excerpt: Regarding her book *Gynecology: Women Over the Past Six Thousand Years* (Paris: Dentu, 1873). Autograph letter addressed to the editor of *Paris Journal*. No place, no date [1873]. 3 pp., small in-8. Olympe Audouard fears that her book will be savaged by critics without even being read: “[…] there are other books that some of these so-called critics barely open and judge solely by their title, their cover, and—let’s say it—based on the author’s gender; if the author is a woman, the work is condemned […] It is against this kind of criticism that I wish to defend myself by explaining, in my own words, the subject, the purpose, and the conclusion I have sought to draw from a work that I had the reckless audacity to title GYNECOLOGY, not knowing what other name to give to the history of women over the past six thousand years. All the constituent elements of our modern society have ancient origins; I sought to prove that the feminine element is in no way inferior to them, for it can lay claim to a significant role in the history of humankind. I have not distorted the facts to argue a case. When I speak of women in Hindustan, Persia, Assyria, Egypt, Greece, Rome, Germania, the biblical world, and the Christian world, I describe both their good and their bad deeds; I describe her situation and the influence she has exerted. My aim is to prove that her past in no way justifies the reproaches leveled against her, the insults, and the slander of the modern Euripides. And I arrive at this conclusion: that women in the pagan world were often inferior to men, both morally and intellectually, but that Christianity transformed them by pulling them out of the abyss of perdition into which they had been plunged. It was primarily through women that the false gods were overthrown, and the zeal with which they embraced the divine religion of Christ, and the courage they displayed in the face of torture and persecution, proved that they were the first to understand what is pure and to appreciate what is beautiful, just, and true. Having reached this conviction, I DO NOT HESITATE TO CONCLUDE THAT SHE IS MORALLY AND INTELLECTUALLY EQUAL TO MAN […].” She is working on Volume II of “Gynecology”; an investigation into the mistreatment of “Redskin women,” on “the improvement brought about in the lot of women in our new states,” the towns of Laramy and Cheyenne, and her desire to explore America by traveling through the Rockies; a FASCINATING account of her trip to Russia, etc.