Although these books were published only under Jules Michelet's name, he explicitly credited Athénaïs, not only for turning his attention to natural history, but also as an active collaborator.

[3] Before he died in 1874, Jules Michelet accorded Athénaïs literary rights to his books and papers, acknowledging their collaboration and that she had a significant role in the writing he published during his later years.

[4] Although the legacy of his works was contested by Jules Michelet's son-in-law, Athénaïs won the court case and retained the papers and publishing rights.

[4] In a tradition of writing about Jules Michelet during the century following his death, some authors painted Athénaïs as exerting control to guide her husband's literary endeavours along her own lines of interest.

[5] In response to that interpretation, historian Bonnie Smith, discusses a potentially misogynist effort to discount the contributions of Athénaïs and notes, "Michelet scholarship, like other historiographical debates, has taken great pains to establish the priority of the male over the female in writing history".