The ARTFL French Women Writers Project is a searchable database containing works by French women authors from the 16th to the 19th century. Currently, the Women Writers Project is separate from the main ARTFL database; eventually the texts here will be merged with the ARTFL database. This merge will more than double the holdings of texts by French women writers in ARTFL, adding approximately 100 texts written by women both well known and non-canonical. After the merge, we will also change the search mechanisms of the ARTFL database so that users can search the database with gender as a criterion.

The Women Writers Project currently contains texts by 40 authors. There are 5.1 million words, 98,000 unique forms in 99 documents. For titles and general publication information, please consult the database bibliography.

The French Women Writers Project is still provisional. This is the first release of the database and, consequently, there may be some problems with it. For known problems, see the errata page. If you encounter problems not listed on this page, please e-mail the details to achou@diderot.uchicago.edu.

For information about texts we are currently adding or planning to add, see FWW Database Development.

This site also contains a general bibliography of works by French women writers, which can be used for general research. This bibliography is the source from which we are choosing texts to add to the database as work progresses. There is also a no-frames version of the general bibliography.

Again, the texts in the Women Writers Project are not currently a part of the main ARTFL database but are set up as a separate database. The database is running under the lastest implementation of the ARTFL search engine. For more information about searching using this engine, see PhiloLogic Manual.

Finally, these texts have been prepared for the database in-house, rather than sent overseas for data capture. The texts have been prepared using a text recognition program, along with a French-language spelling and grammar check coupled with software that allows text manipulation (e.g. search-and-replace). The procedure and its problems are documented in detail at procedure, and the html specifications used in preparation are at htmlspecs. Access to these documents is currently restricted to ARTFL and its collaborators. Access to the search form and errata page is restricted to ARTFL subscribers.

More resources and information:

• The University of Chicago Library EFTS Women Writers Resources Page
• Brown's Women Writers Project
• University of Minnesota Early Modern French Women Writers Project
• Emory Women Writers Project
• The Orlando Project
• Victorian Women Writers Project
• Gender representation and histoire des mentalités: Language and Power in the Trésor de la langue française, by Mark Olsen, Histoire et mesure (VI) 1991: 349-73.
• Femmes-écrivains françaises

Questions and comments about the French Women Writers project should be sent to achou@diderot.uchicago.edu.

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