Jules Michelet
Before he died, Jules Michelet accorded Athénaïs literary rights to his books and papers, acknowledging that she had had a significant role in the writing of his later years. Although the will was contested by Jules Michelet's son-in-law, Athénaïs won her case and retained the papers and publishing rights. She published several books about Jules Michelet and his family, based on the extracts and journals he had left her. She bequeathed the literary legacy to Gabriel Monod. The tradition of writing about Jules Michelet thereafter painted Athénaïs as an "abusive widow", exerting sexual control to guide her husband's literary endeavours along her own lines of interest.