“I must contribute to this important work” The collaborative practice of controversial writing in the Coppet Group

Inherent to the creation of the Coppet group, collaboration also characterizes its practice of polemical writing. As the First French Empire began to decline, Germaine de Staël, Benjamin Constant and Auguste Schlegel began to write propaganda in defense of Bernadotte's cause. This article explores, in the light of these writings and Constant's Journaux intimes, the auctorial and editorial perspectives that this collaborative practice of polemical writing calls for.