Introduction: A Political Biography

Beginning with a recapitulation of Flora Tristan’s short but tumultuous life from 1803 to 1844, the introduction explains that although now known as one of the foremost French predecessors to the feminist and socialist movement, historiographical analysis of her legacy in both labour and feminist history has been neglected to the extent that there is nothing on how Jules Puech became her first major historical biographer. The timely discovery of Flora Tristan in his papers has made it possible to enrich our knowledge of both their lives and their activism. By intertwining their lives beyond the grave and using material gleaned from generations of activists as historians, and historians as activists, the double biography reveals more about French history than the two separate lives.