Máire Cross. The Letter in Flora Tristan’s Politics, 1835–1844.

Contents

Preface

1 – Reading Flora Tristan

Political controversy

Fascination for Tristan the feminist, traveller and narrator

New biographical dimensions through correspondence

Epistolary survival of political context

Tristan sources lost and found

2 – The Making of a Utopian Correspondent

French society and mainstream politics

The impact of 1789 on Tristan’s political ideas

Class formation and class consciousness

Epistolary evidence of political awareness in the 1840s

Protest politics and the growth of literacy

Flora Tristan’s political and epistolary apprenticeship

Methodology in epistolary analysis

Letters to Flora Tristan

3 – Speaking from the Heart: The Dichotomy of the Letters in the 1843 and 1844 Correspondence

Dimensions of political letters to a woman activist

Historical dimension of Tristan’s political letters

Response to Flora Tristan’s letters

Epistolary community of support

Epistolary creativity

Rival socialist networks and initiatives

Variety of style

4 – Conflicts of Authority in the Epistolary Creation of Union ouvrière

Letters of investigation

Letters from notables

Letters from a widening circle

Epistolary authority in politics

5 – Utopia in Flora Tristan’s Letters

Utopian inspiration for correspondence

Tensions of pragmatism and vision

Gender presence in Tristan’s utopia

Bibliography