Marie Le Masson Le Golft
Marie Le Masson Le Golft (1750–1826) was a French naturalist.
Life
Marie Le Masson Le Golft was a student of naturalist Jacques-François Dicquemare, a friend of her father, in his scientific work. She tried to publish the great work he had undertaken on molluscs, but necessary costs drove back the successive authorities. The many steps it undertook to this end put in relation with the scientists of the late eighteenth century as Lacepede, Condorcet or Daubenton.
She was a teacher, and published in 1788 Letters on Education and wrote various literary works that were not published.
Two of her books are still cited: the Balance of Nature (1784), where she assigns to hundreds of animals, plants and minerals, and Outline to a General Table of Mankind (1787), world map on which all peoples then known, and their characteristics are represented by symbols.
Masson spent the last years of her life, poor and almost forgotten in Rouen, where she was a professor of geography and drawing.
At her death, she bequeathed, to the city of Rouen, a library in which was included the collection of drawings, engravings and copper plates that were to be used in the publication of the book of Father Dicquemare.
She was a member of several provincial academies as well as the Royal Academy of Madrid Education, Philadelphia circle, the French Cape Town, and the Royal Society of Bilbao.
Works
- Entretien sur Le Havre, Le Havre, chez les libraires, 1781.
- Balance de la nature, Paris, chez Barois l'aîné, 1784 (rééditée par Marc Décimo, Préface La femme qui notait la Nature, Les presses du réel, 2005)
- Esquisse d'un tableau général du genre humain, planisphère imprimé par Moithey, ingénieur-géographe du roi, 1787.
- Le Havre au jour le jour de 1778 à 1790, Éd. Philippe Manneville, Rouen, Société de l'histoire de Normandie, 1999 (procure les Annales de la ville du Havre rédigées par Marie Le Masson Le Golft entre 1778 et 1790, ainsi que des extraits de l' Entretien sur Le Havre .)
- Lettres relatives à l'éducation, Paris, Buisson, 1788
Sources
- George Kish, Une mappemonde anthropologique du XVIII e siècle, « Esquisse d'un tableau général du genre humain », Florence, Società di studi geografici, 1982.
- ( en ) Josef Konvitz, The Enlightened Taste of Marie Le Masson Le Golft, Petits propos culinaires.
- ( en ) Bridgette Byrd O'Connor, Marie Le Masson Le Golft, 1749-1826 : Eighteenth-Century Educator, Historian, and Natural Philosopher, Thèse de doctorat de l'Université d'Oxford, 2005
- Cyril Le Meur, Notice dans le Dictionnaire en ligne des Femmes de l'Ancienne France, sur le site de la Société internationale pour l'étude des femmes de l'Ancien Régime .
- Cyril Le Meur, « Marie Le Masson Le Golft dans sa petite Ithaque, ou le parcours intellectuel d'une Havraise au tournant des Lumières », Dix-huitième siècle, La femme des Lumières, n o 36, 2004.
- Cyril Le Meur, Épigones provinciaux de l'écriture apologétique de la nature : l'abbé Dicquemare et Marie Le Masson Le Golft, Actes du colloque Écrire la nature au XVIII e siècle. Autour de l'abbé Pluche, Presses universitaires de Paris-Sorbonne, 2006.
- Noémi-Noire Oursel, Une Havraise oubliée, Marie Le Masson Le Golft, Évreux, Imprimerie de l'Eure, 1908.
Furthering reading
- Bridgette Byrd O'Connor, Marie Le Masson Le Golft, 1749-1826: Eighteenth-century Educator, Historian, and Natural Philosopher (University of Oxford, 2005)