Anne Verjus is a research director at the CNRS, Section 40 (Politics, Power, Organization), and director of the Triangle laboratory. She is publishing Abolir le patriarcat : l’utopie féministe de James Henry Lawrence (1773-1840).
Abolishing Patriarchy: The Feminist Utopia of James Henry Lawrence (1773–1840).
Anne Verjus
Editions PUSE
Collection Le Genre en toutes lettres
Throughout the pages of this essay, Anne Verjus—a specialist in the social history of ideas and the history of women’s citizenship—examines the life and work of James Henry Lawrence (1773–1840) and his novel The Empire of the Nairs (1801). Ahead of his time, the English author imagined, in this 1,300-page feminist utopia, a society based on gender equality, where women transmit property and family names, and take full responsibility for raising children. Published in several languages and under various titles, Lawrence’s work received mixed reactions in the countries where it appeared—an aspect Anne Verjus also explores in her analysis.
Summury :
“Do we still remember James Henry Lawrence (1773–1840) and his novel The Empire of the Nairs (1801), that vision of a world where women are independent of men? […] How was this book born? What became of it? How can we understand its ideas? Can it be connected to other intellectual models or traditions? What kind of response did it provoke?
This essay answers these questions, offering a comprehensive and unprecedented study of Lawrence, his work, and his thought— the result of a patient investigation conducted by the author in the United States, England, France, and Germany.
Readers will follow the path of the young Englishman, from London to Paris and Orléans, via Göttingen and Weimar; they will go through the debates on paternal authority, motherhood, and women’s emancipation in Revolutionary Europe.” (translated from French)