From the Editors

This forum continues the series "Thinking History, Doing History," inaugurated by Professors James R. Farr and John J. Contreni, the preceding editors of French Historical Studies. The two opening essays offer fresh insights on the theme of gender and the self in eighteenth-century England and France that arise from a comparison of recent biographies by Gary Kates and Nina Rattner Gelbart of two eighteenth-century figures, a transgendered officer and diplomat--the Chevalier d'Eon--and a state-sponsored midwife named Mme du Coudray. Je rey S. Ravel's essay situates his reflections within current historiography on gendered boundaries in the French Enlightenment and Revolution. Lisa Forman Cody widens the focus of her remarks to include responses to the Chevalier d'Eon and midwifery in eighteenth-century England. Two self-reflexive comments by Gary Kates and Nina Rattner Gelbart that chronicle their experiences as biographers open the way for Elizabeth Colwill to consider in the concluding essay the historiographical and methodoloogical issues that the biographical genre raises for historians. The comparative aspect of this forum enhances its appeal for French historians already interested in the gendered dimension of history and new developments in the writing of biography.

Jo Burr Margadant and Ted E. Margadant, Editors

...