Cecilia Beach examines the life and works of Marie-Louise Gagneur (1832-1902), a nineteenth-century socialist novelist. Fourierist, feminist, free-thinker and pacifist, Gagneur published about thirty novels and political essays between 1859 and 1901. Primarily known for the strong anticlerical opinions characteristic of novels like La Croisade noire (1864), Marie-Louise Gagneur also explored a variety of social and political themes in her novels. Le Calvaire des femmes (1863), for example, is a feminist novel on the exploitation and the poverty of working class women in France, while Chair à Canon (1872), published in the aftermath of the Paris Commune, is a harsh denunciation of war. C. Beach focuses on the themes of anticléricalism, feminism and war, while highlighting the importance of Fourierist ideas in Gagneur’s fiction.

Cecilia Beach est professeur de langue et lettres françaises à Alfred University (Etat de New York). Elle est titulaire d’un DEA de l’université de Paris VII et d’un doctorat de New York University. Spécialiste de la litérature de femmes françaises, elle a publié Staging Politics and Gender : French Women’s Drama, 1880-1923 (2005). Ses recherches actuelles portent sur les romans de deux écrivaines socialistes et féministes du dix-neuvième siècle, André Léo et Marie-Louise Gagneur.