Marie Souvestre

Marie Souvestre (1830 to 1905) was a French educator, born in Brest and the daughter of the novelist Emile Souvestre, who set out to develop independent minds in the young women she taught. She founded a girls boarding school in France, Les Ruches in Fontainebleau, where the writer Natalie Clifford Barney and her sister Laura were later educated. After she left that school together with one of its teachers, she founded Allenswood Academy in Wimbledon outside London, where her most famous pupil was Eleanor Roosevelt. Souvestre took a particular interest in Roosevelt, who learned fluent French and gained self-confidence there; the two corresponded until Souvestre died in March 1905, and Roosevelt kept her portrait on her desk for the rest of her life. Les Ruches also shaped the novel Olivia by Dorothy Bussy, a former pupil who later taught Shakespeare at Allenswood. Souvestre appears in the atlas as a founder of schools whose teaching aimed at independent thought rather than accomplishment alone.