Scrittura, sociabilità e strategie di persuasione: Marie-Anne Paulze-Lavoisier, secrétaire (1758-1836)

Taking Marie-Anne Paulze-Lavoisier (1758-1836) as a primary case study, this dissertation examines note-taking practices and information management during the long eighteenth-century (1770-1830 circa). Known as the wife and scientific associate of the French chemist Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier (1743-1794), and more notably, as a translator and illustrator of chemical texts on her own right, Paulze-Lavoisier is here presented as a secretaire and namely as someone whose main charge was to store and exchange information by means of writing. I focus, in particular, on the so-called Registres de laboratoire: 14 notebooks containing the accounts of numerous experiments performed by Lavoisier and his associates in Paris between 1772 and 1788 and annotated thoroughly by Paulze-Lavoisier. In contrast to previous historiography, I reassess the meaning of the Registres in the light of the practices by which they were compiled, consulted, and preserved. By tracing Paulze-Lavoisier’s interventions and exploring the material and social conditions in which they were made, I show the role of scribal practices in Lavoisier’s working routine and, at the same time, I retrace her trajectories as a secrétaire. In the last part of the dissertation, I explore the fate of the Registres after Lavoisier’s death in 1794, when Paulze-Lavoisier’s work as a secrétaire took new directions. The broader aim of the thesis is to raise new questions relating to the relationships between note-taking practices, gender, and sociability as well as to the social construction of scientific authority, and the social visibility of scribal helpers and assistants before and after the French Revolution.