Letters take up a lot of space in life. But it’s not a wasted space. We do a lot by letters, and many people don’t trust a letter as much as a conversation. (F. Guizot to D. de Lieven, 13 September 1850)

Letters exchanged between François Guizot and Dorothée de Lieven

The Guizot archives, and in particular the 47,000 folios of correspondence, raise an archival and historiographical challenge. It constitutes one of the largest collections of private archives in France. Digital tools and methods are ideally suited to meeting this challenge. As of May 2024, over 15,000 autograph folios of François Guizot’s correspondence from 1806 to 1874 are already accessible.

In order to give wide access to a collection that is remarkable for its volume and thematic richness on 19th-century Europe, the project aims to inventory and analytically index the academic, political and diplomatic correspondence of François Guizot, a 19th-century actor. The aim of this edition is not only to provide a network of readers, but also to enable them to search and delve into a body of correspondence.

The project began with the digital edition of the 11,000 folios of the correspondence between the historian and statesman François Guizot (1787-1874), and a female figure from the European diplomatic world of the first half of the 19th century, Dorothée van Benckendorff, Princess of Lieven (1785-1857), between 1836 and 1856. Over 2,900 letters are now accessible, part of the private archives of a committed political and intellectual player in the public domain.

The first objective is to make available to the public the entire corpus of correspondence constituted and preserved by François Guizot: to enable a global apprehension, facilitate navigation between the different parts of the fonds and stimulate thematic exploration.

To meet the needs of amateurs and experts alike, this edition has been designed as a digital library structured into thematic and biographical collections. Cross-disciplinary thematic browsing is made possible by indexing based on 325 keywords.

The project is financed by the Association François Guizot, benefits from the technical facilities of the EMAN platform, and is supported by the Comité des Travaux Historiques et Scientifiques, and the Normandy DRAC. It is directed by Marie Dupond.

The project began with the digital edition of the 11,000 folios of correspondence between historian and statesman François Guizot (1787-1874), and a female figure from the European diplomatic world of the first half of the 19th century, Dorothée van Benckendorff, Princess of Lieven (1785-1857), between 1836 and 1856. Over 2,900 letters have now been transcribed, indexed and structured.