French Literature Reviews - 2026

Sarah Al-Matary, Deux célèbres inconnues
Writers: Biography, Letters and Memoirs

Two women who shared the same name: Jeanne Weil (1849–1905) and Jeanne Weill (1859–1925). History has all the more effectively erased them because neither lived under her birth name. Jeanne Weil is known as Madame Proust, the mother of Marcel, the great author of In Search of Lost Time. Jeanne Weill, under the pseudonym Dick May, became a pioneering social science intellectual and progressive activist.

These two contemporaries crossed paths in the republican Paris of the Belle Époque, amid the rhythm of high-society gatherings and scientific breakthroughs. Yet what remains of their works and their struggles?

This book reflects on the forms of validation available to women and the systemic invisibility that affects them. The biographical investigation takes the shape of an equation with multiple unknowns, in which the journeys of the two Jeanne Weil(l)s intersect with those of Proust, Durkheim, and Bergson. It highlights both the processes by which the literary canon is formed and the strategies employed by women to shatter the glass ceiling—from yesterday to today.

Sarah Al-Matary is an Associate Professor with an HDR in Literature at Lumière University Lyon 2 and a member of the Institut Universitaire de France. She is the author of La Haine des clercs. L’anti-intellectualisme en France (Seuil, 2019).

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An article discussing this book can be read on en-attendant-nadeau.fr:

"Women in Chiaroscuro: An Interview with Sarah Al-Matary", by Alexis Buffet

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Contents

Preamble
Stones
Clichés
A Room of One's Own
The Holy Family
Daughters of Zion
Identities
Never Without My Mother
The Spirit and the Letter
"Socialites"
Durkheim's Little Sister
Good Offices
Ashes
The Disappearance of Berthe
The Visible and the Invisible

Appendix: Weil/Weill Family Tree

Notes

List of Illustrations

Acknowledgments

Biographical studies often intersect with cultural history by tracing how notable figures navigate the institutional frameworks of their time. In late nineteenth-century France, intellectual life was shaped by emerging social sciences and vibrant salons, environments where gender dynamics played a crucial role in public recognition. Readers interested in the history of women's writing, the formation of literary canons, and the intellectual networks of fin-de-siècle Paris may find this investigation relevant.