Désirée Eymery

Little is known of the intriguing female publisher Désirée Eymery, except that she inherited her press from her father, who had published several of Nodier's books decades earlier. She collaborated with the Romanticist and Saint-Simonist activist Léon Halévy. It is not surprising, given the central role of Feminism in Saint-Simon's thought, that Halévy would be in collaboration with a strong, enterprising single woman working in a traditionally gender-determined public role. This, plus her educational activism (as seen in the titles in her bibliography) goad the question of whether she had roots or connections with the Saint-Simonist community, in which the ultra-Feminist wing had played a leading role in the establishment of a number of Free Schools set up in working-class areas in Paris. She might also possibly be the future mother of the gender-bending Decadent author Rachilde, born Marguerite Eymery, whose mother was, it seems, heavily involved with Spiritualism.