Bon Anniversaire, Gustave Flaubert!

French novelist Gustave Flaubert, author of Madame Bovary, was born on December 12, 1821 in Rouen, France.

Primary Sources:

Flaubert, Gustave. Lettre de M. Gustave Flaubert à la municipalité de Rouen au sujet d'un vote concernant Louis Bouilhet. Paris: Michel Lévyfrères, 1872.

Flaubert, Gustave. Madame Bovary: Moeurs De Province. Paris: M. Lévyfrères, 1857. 

French Autograph Collection. (Consists of samples of the writing of French notables, including Flaubert.)

Hobson, Charles, Gustave Flaubert, and Julian Barnes. Flaubert &Louise: Letters and Impressions. San Francisco: Limestone Press, 1988.  (Flaubert had an affair with poet Louise Colet from 1846 to1855.)

Sand, George, and Gustave Flaubert. Correspondance Entre George Sand Et Gustave Flaubert. Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 1904. 

Madame Bovary on film:

Chabrol, Claude, et al. Madame Bovary.[S.l.]: MK2 Productions S.A., 2002. (Starring Isabelle Huppert and Jean-Francois Balmer)






Minnelli, Vincente, et al. Madame Bovary. Burbank, CA: Distributed byWarner Home Video, 2007. (Starring Jennifer Jones and Van Heflin)

Renoir, Jean, et al. Madame Bovary. Las Cruces, NM: Hen's Tooth Video, 1989. (Starring Valentine Tessier and Pierre Renoir)

Anniversary of Révolte des Canuts

November 21^st is the 170^th anniversary of the Révolte des Canuts in Lyon, France.  The silk weavers of Lyon (called canuts) rose up against the tarif, or fixed minimum rate for finished cloth. Following salary decreases, the tarif was negotiated between manufacturers of silk, foremen, and silk weavers in October of 1831.  However, most of the manufacturers refused to apply it.  

On November 21, 1831, over a thousand silk workers and their supporters revolted against the manufacturers in all districts of Lyon.  The insurgents held Lyon for three days and captured the arsenal of the National Guard.  The battle turned violent, with over 200 civilians and 75 soldiers killed.  The workers’ victory was short-lived as Louis Philippe sent his son, the Duke of Orleans, and the Minister of War, Marshal Soult, along with an army of 30,000 with orders to dissolve the collective of workers, cancel the tarif, and disarm the population.  While the workers did not immediately achieve their desired outcome, this was an important event which created worker solidarity and led to stronger organization and support in fighting for future labor laws.

Primary Sources:

Chevalier, Michel. Evénemens de Lyon. [Paris]: Everat, imprimeur, 1831. (Extracted from the Le Globe, the main Saint-Simonian newspaper, Oct. 31- Dec. 27, 1831.  Includes letters by Francois and Peiffer, chefs de l'eglise saint-simonienne de Lyon.) Special Collections D385 .C44 1831. 

Cours de theorie de la fabrication d'étoffes de soie deLyon dirigé par Messieurs Martin et Faure suivi par Rivoire Adrien. (manuscript treatise on the history and weaving of silk, with hundreds of silk samples attached, circa 1860.) Special Collections - Manuscript Collection. M1834 & M1834 FLAT BOX 1.

L'écho de la fabrique. Lyon: De l'imprimerie de Charvin, 1831. (A labor newspaper dedicated to silk manufacturing and related industries.  It was published from 1831-1835.)  Special Collections – Rare Book Collection. DC801 .L96 E3 1831-1832. *Also available full-text online.
See also Frobert, L., & Beecher, J. (2010). L'écho de la fabrique : naissance de la presse ouvrière à Lyon, 1831-1834. Lyon: ENS.

Monfalcon, Jean Baptiste. Histoire des insurrections de Lyon, en 1831 et en 1834: d'après des documents authentiques : précédéed'un essai sur les ouvriers en soie et sur l'organisation de la fabrique. Lyon: L. Perrin, 1834. Green - Stacks K .M782.

Wednesday primary source #18 - True Crime!

POLICE-MAGAZINE. Paris. Complete run: No. 1 (Dec. 1, 1930) through No. 450 (1939); bound in annual volumes.

At the end of the summer, Stanford was fortunate to acquire a complete run of the French illustrated "true crime" magazine from the 1930s, Police-Magazine.

Police-Magazine was part of a genre whose most well-known titles were Détective (published by Gallimard during the same years), and the earlier Le Petit Parisien, and L’Illustration, the latter two focusing less on criminal sensationalism. We have microfilm runs of the latter two; this is now the only set of Police-Magazine in North America. This periodical, aimed at a working class audience, is heavily illustrated, and serves as a valuable addition to SULAIR’s holdings on the turbulent 1930s in France. In addition to the journals above, it complements holdings in graphic novels and comics, our collection of the French crime fiction series Masque, and other works of interwar French fiction, politics, and crime. Paging through, I was struck by the number of female authors. While many of the contributors are now forgotten, this magazine contained at least one early serialized story Georges Simenon, and also probably provided him with ample inspiration for his novels.

From the vendor's notes: "Police-Magazine reported on a mix of organized crime, political and social scandal, titillating sexual and romantic misdeeds, urban vices such as gambling and prostitution, daring thefts from the rich, and grand guignol acts of violence -- all enhanced with photos (frequently retouched to increase the shock value) and with sleazy illustrations. For much of the run, the photo editors also went out of their way to publish pictures of young and strikingly good-looking criminals of both sexes -- often with nothing more than a caption noting that the individual had committed some petty misdemeanor.
The mix of articles is weighted toward coverage of Paris and the Paris region, but also includes reports on crimes in other French cities and towns and in rural areas of France, as well as in other European countries, the United States and elsewhere."