Good morning all,

Paris! What a city. Enjoy some stories of women who have created a life for themselves in this amazing place.

To begin, Meta Vauz Warrick Fuller, who took the time honoured route of leaving her bourgeois family to be an artist in Paris. Here is one of her sculptures:

And here is her story:

Making her arrival in Paris […] she attended classes at Académie Colarossi and the École des Beaux-Arts, became somewhat of a darling of the Parisian art community, was invited to present her works in several esteemed salons, gained well-known patrons […], and was personally invited by none other than François Auguste René Rodin himself to study as his apprentice during her last year abroad after he beheld some of her works and deemed that she was worthy of his mentorship.

http://moorewomenartists.org/meta-vaux-warrick-fuller/

Of course it is very hard to talk about the women of Paris – particularly in a newsletter called Feminist Friday – without talking about Simone de Beauvior. Enjoy this 1974 interview with her, or at least this description of her odd if delightful living situation with Satre:

Looking at Mile. de Beauvoir's life, you see how determinedly she has lived her theories. She met Sartre when she was 20 and he was 23. For 45 years they have seen each other—except on rare occasions—every day, but apart from a short spell immediately after the war when they lived on separate floors in the same hotel, they have never shared a house. They have always addressed each other as vous not tu. A friend tells of visiting them one afternoon in 1948 in the flat Sartre shared with his mother and finding Sartre and Mile. de Beauvoir working in different rooms, like children doing their homework.

https://www.nytimes.com/1974/06/02/archives/a-talk-with-simone-de-beauvoirr-marriage-is-an-alienating.html

More dispatches from the world of bookselling! Sylvia Beach Whitman, like Christina Foyle last week, took over a famous bookstore (Shakespeare & Co) from her father. Unlike Christina Foyle, she seems to have become involved in professionalising the operation:

She has installed a phone and computer (much to her father's disgust), launched a website, and limited the number of people allowed to sleep in the store at one time to six.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/expat/expatlife/9643855/Turning-the-page-at-Shakespeare-and-Company.html

Speaking of Christina Foyle, a bit of a follow up from last week. Many, many thanks to the subscriber who sent me their own favourite Christina Foyle urban legends from the bookstore itself. Caveat from both of us, these are for entertainment purposes only and may not be actual truth (but I hope they are):

- in later years her hiring process was: a group of promising people were shuffled into her apartment above the shop, where she was reclining on her chaise longue. She'd ask them if they played any instruments, and anyone who did would be automatically hired. The rest would be shuffled off into another room where the real interview would take place

• one time a violinist was fired for stealing. Reinstated at Christina's insistence; "such a talented young man"

• she fired an entire department for talking too loudly

• it was accepted that, if you had any specialist knowledge – art history, for example – you'd be staffed in a completely different department.

• there was one phone line for the store and if you called it you got a message telling you to write in instead.

Au revoir,

A xx.