Olympe Audouard (1832–1890)

Olympe Audouard was born Félicité-Olympe de Jouval in Marseille, France. She married Henri-Alexis Audouard, a notary, but the marriage was unhappy and she soon separated from him. She was unable to obtain a divorce until it became legal under French law in 1885. She described her life in her memoirs this way: "My life has had two distinct parts: a dull, painful one that I spent in France, the other sunny, cheerful one I spent traveling." She became one of the most important feminists in late 19th-century France, demanding full equality for women, including social and economic reforms and the right to vote and stand for election. Supported by the proceeds from her novels and other writing, she traveled through Egypt, Turkey, Russia, and the USA. In the 1860s, she founded several journals in Paris, including the literary review Le Papillon and La Revue cosmopolite, and got to know luminaries such as Theophile Gautier and Lamartine. Among her works were Histoire d'un mendiant (Story of a Beggar, 1862), Les mystères du sérail et des harems turcs (Mysteries of the Seraglio and Turkish Harems, 1863), Guerre aux hommes (War to Man, 1866), À travers l'Amérique (Across America, 1869–71), and Silhouettes parisiennes (Parisian Silhouettes, 1882).