Caroline Rémy de Guebhard
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Caroline Rémy de Guebhard (April 27, 1855—April 24, 1929, was a French socialist, journalist, and feminist best known under the pen name Séverine.
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. A growing militant in her views, she became friends with fellow journalist and feminist, Marguerite Durand but following a confrontation with the Marxist Jules Guesde she left the newspaper in 1888. She continued writing for other papers in which she promoted women's emancipation and denounced social injustices of all kinds including the Dreyfus Affair. In 1897, she began writing for Durand's feminist daily newspaper La Fronde.
A staunch leftist, Rémy backed some of the 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 she joined the French Communist Party; however, only a few years later, she quit the party in order to maintain her membership in the Ligue des droits de l'homme.
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, D.C..
Caroline Rémy died in 1929 at the residence for female journalists in Pierrefonds, Oise département in the Picardie region of France. Some of her papers can be found in the Bibliothèque Marguerite Durand in Paris.
