Fellow #historians, the internet is obsessed with Julie d’Aubigny, known as La Maupin - a bisexual, cross dressing, sword fighting opera singer in Louis XIV’s reign.
She seems entirely invented by the romantic writer Théophile Gautier in the 1830s. What do we *actually* know?
She seems entirely invented by the romantic writer Théophile Gautier in the 1830s. What do we *actually* know?
OK, Twitter! With your help, we've established Julie d'Aubigny, known as La Maupin, was real, did fence, did wear male clothes, and was an opera singer. But now to see if we can historicise her adventures. Interestingly, this shows up in a British newspaper in 1790... 
These helpfully put some of the rumours 40 years prior to Theophile Gautier's romantic novel. We know from a French source of the same era that many untrue stories were told of her during her lifetime - are tales of prison breaks, duels to the death just scurrilous gossip?
I've just spent 4 years writing a book about 18th century celebs - so many of the fun stories turned out to be nothing more than unfounded gossip and rumour, churned out in a new era of 'public sphere' engagement with the press and pamphlets.
So, the problem we have with La Maupin is she's typical of a prominent early actress of whom scandalous and exciting things were said, but it's really hard to find any evidence for them. We could look for royal pardons, because La Maupin was allegedly pardoned by King Louis...
The stories of her killing 3 men in duelling combat at a ball would produce coroner's reports and legal paperwork; but those stories feel dubious to me. Duelling was highly ritualised and would be fought on a separate date, rather than "you and me, outside, now!"
I was lucky to study at York, where one of my lecturers was Stuart Carroll who wrote this fascinating book on French dueling culture. Maupin would surely have left many records if she was fighting (and killing) reviews.history.ac.uk/review/572
Here's another source, with thanks to @anne_theriault, which dates to 1775. Again, we are 70 years on from La Maupin's death, so these fun, sexy adventures may well be accumulated gossip from 8 decades of rumour. Or they might be well founded. Hard to know books.google.ca/books?id=LDwTA…
@anne_theriault Though it's fairly obvious to see that these stories in 1775 influenced the British newspaper report from 1790, given how much interaction there was between French and British culture
@anne_theriault So, for the next stage, we'd have to actually go and do some archival digging in France - we'd need legal records, diary entries, royal pardon information, details of the nunnery, and we'd have to comb through very early pamphlets and papers.
@anne_theriault As much as I REALLY want this to be true, we can't simply accept secondhand stories told decades after Julie d'Aubigny's death. Historians have to be able to examine all the available evidence before we can judge the reliability of a meme-tastic Tumblr biography.
@anne_theriault Basically, what we need is for @DrSKBarker @DrLindaBriggs Prof Stuart Carroll @lindapkiernan et al to drop everything and go hunting for the real Julie d'Aubigny!
