Authority in the Margins. Paratexts, Politics and History in Louise de Keralio's Translations

In her translations of the English travel writer John Carr, Voyage en Hollande and L’Etranger en Irlande, Louise de Keralio (1756-1822) turns a humble, “feminine” activity into an outlet for ideas. Adding copious paratexts (preliminary discourses, translator’s prefaces, translator’s notes, footnotes, a 225-page essay on Dutch commerce) that swell Carr’s single-volume books into two, she engages in expansive philosophizing about politics and history, showcases her credentials as an Enlightenment intellectual and her rigorous historical method, and pronounces on an encyclopedic range of subjects. Deftly skirting Napoleonic censorship, the former revolutionary advocates, in contrast to imperial domination, a transnational “république universelle” grounded in shared knowledge. How effective was Keralio’s choice to disseminate her far-reaching ideas, without apologies for her gender, not in books she authored herself, but in the margins of works written by another in the seemingly minor genre of the travelogue?