Anne Larsen, professor of French at Hope College, has published with Garland Publishing in New York and London the collection "Writings by Pre-Revolutionary French Women.  From Marie de France to Elizabeth Vigée-Le Brun."

          Co-edited with Colette Winn from Washington
  University in Saint Louis, the 592-page volume includes
  English translations of selected works of 30 women writers
  from the Middle Ages to the early 19th century.  The
  majority of the works are appearing in translation for the
  first time.
          According to Larsen, the authors range from those
  prominent because of their social position or literary fame
  to those slowly becoming part of a new canon of Old Regime
  women writers:  authors whose works were known to their
  contemporaries but who have slipped into near invisibility
  in the following centuries until their recent rediscovery
  and reassessment.
          The authors either wrote in literary genres viewed
  as best suited for women, such as pedagogical treatises and
  devotional poetry, or adopted genres upon which they left
  their mark.  The most popular genres in the volume are
  memoirs, autobiography and letters.
          The content of the works varies greatly.  They
  range from the courtly poetry of the 12th-century Marie de
  France, to political pamphlets containing virulent attacks
  against Robespierre's reign of terror by the late 18th-
  century feminist Olympe de Gouges.
          Each of the 30 contributors has prefaced his or
  her translation with an essay on the life and works of the
  writer, and follows it with a bibliography.