Séverine

Caroline Rémy de Guebhard (27 April 1855 – 24 April 1929) was a French journalist with anarchist, socialist, communist and feminist views, best known under the pen name Séverine. She has been called the first professional female journalist in France.

Biography

Around 1880, Caroline Rémy became involved with Jules Vallès' socialist publication, Cri du Peuple. Vallès eventually gave her control over the newspaper due to his poor health. Becoming increasingly militant, she befriended journalist and feminist Marguerite Durand but, following a confrontation with the Marxist Jules Guesde, left the newspaper in 1888.

In December 1891, she was invited by Pierre Martinet—later a theorist of individualist anarchism—to attend one of his 'soup lectures' at Salle Favier. These events aimed to provide food and anarchist newspapers to attendees before delivering anarchist speeches to them.

She continued writing for other papers in which she promoted women's emancipation and denounced social injustices, including the Dreyfus affair. In 1897, she began writing for Durand's feminist daily newspaper La Fronde.

A staunch leftist, Rémy backed a number of anarchist causes, including the defense of Germaine Berton, and participated in the 1927 efforts to save Sacco and Vanzetti. She supported the Russian Revolution of 1917 and, in 1921, joined the French Communist Party, resigning a few years later in order to maintain her membership of the Human Rights League.

Bernard Lecache, a founding member of the Committee of Honor of International League Against Anti-Semitism (LICA), (now International League Against Racism and Anti-Semitism (LICRA)), wrote her biography. Her portrait was painted by Pierre-Auguste Renoir in 1885 and now hangs in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC.