Previous Slide Sample Collections Next Slide
Creation of two samples of 300 texts roughly balanced by genre, collection and time period driven by what I have of texts by French women taken from:
TLF/Frantext60 texts
ARTFL FWW99 texts
BASILE (Champion)32 texts
Bibliothèque des Lettres
(Bibliopolis)		 109 texts

67 Female Authors and 170 Male authors.

Genre by Gender of Author
GenreFemaleMale
Conte (Fable)3029
Correspondance1515
Histoire*170
Melanges litteraires1818
Memoires98
Poesie1710
Recit de Voyage53
Roman152155
Theatre68
Traite ou essai2136
* All history of science by Helene Metzger
balanced by additional Traite ou essai

Frequencies by Period by Gender of Author
  1500-1599 1600-1699 1700-1799 1800-1899 1900-1999 Total
Female 363140 2152653 2784015 12055319 1198012 18553139
Male 165785 3152021 5529055 15450265 2714009 27011135
Differences in text size may be due to select criteria of particular projects/publishers or may reflect smaller works by women.

Counter example: Madeleine de Scudéry's baroque novel Artamène ou Le Grand Cyrus (1649-53), 30 volumes, 13,000 pages, 2 million words. (Not included in this study).

Previous Slide Olsen: Écriture Féminine...: Slide 6 Next Slide