Author: Robert Darnton
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 1324035595
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 454
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Book Description
A brilliant account of the coming of the French Revolution, and the culminating work of this most distinguished historian. When a Parisian crowd stormed the Bastille in July 1789, it triggered the overthrow of the monarchy and the birth of a new society. In retrospect we understand the French Revolution as the outcome of such factors as a faltering economy and Enlightenment thought. But what did the Parisians themselves think they were doing—how did they understand their world? In this dazzling history, Robert Darnton draws on decades of study to conjure a past as vivid as today’s news. He explores eighteenth-century Paris as an information society like our own, its news circuits centered in cafés, on park benches, and under the Palais-Royal’s Tree of Cracow. Through pamphlets, gossip, and public performances, the events of some forty years—from disastrous treaties and royal debauchery to thrilling hot-air balloon ascents—entered the churning collective consciousness of ordinary Parisians. With public trust eroding as new aspirations soared, Parisians prepared themselves for revolution.
Author: David Garrioch
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520243277
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 397
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Book Description
"An unusually compelling work of scholarly synthesis: a history of a city of revolution in a revolutionary century. Garrioch claims that until 1750 Paris remained a city characterized by a powerful sense of hierarchy. From the mid-century on, however, and with gathering speed, economic, demographic, political, and social change swept the city. Having produced an extremely engaging account of the old corporate society, Garrioch turns to the forces that relentlessly undermined it."—John E. Talbott, author of The Pen and Ink Sailor: Charles Middleton and the King's Navy, 1778-1813 "A truly wonderful synthesis of the many historical strands that compose the history of eighteenth-century Paris. In rewriting the history of the French Revolution as a more than century-long urban metamorphosis, Garrioch makes a brilliant case for the centrality of Paris in the history of France."—Bonnie Smith, author of The Gender of History: Men, Women, and Historical Practice
Author: Robert Darnton
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0195144511
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 377
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Book Description
The publishing industry in France in the years before the Revolution was a lively and sometimes rough-and-tumble affair, as publishers and printers scrambled to deal with (and if possible evade) shifting censorship laws and tax regulations, in order to cater to a reading public's appetite for books of all kinds, from the famous Encyclopédie, repository of reason and knowledge, to scandal-mongering libel and pornography. Historian and librarian Robert Darnton uses his exclusive access to a trove of documents-letters and documents from authors, publishers, printers, paper millers, type founders, ink manufacturers, smugglers, wagon drivers, warehousemen, and accountants-involving a publishing house in the Swiss town of Neuchatel to bring this world to life. Like other places on the periphery of France, Switzerland was a hotbed of piracy, carefully monitoring the demand for certain kinds of books and finding ways of fulfilling it. Focusing in particular on the diary of Jean-François Favarger, a traveling sales rep for a Swiss firm whose 1778 voyage, on horseback and on foot, around France to visit bookstores and renew accounts forms the spine of this story, Darnton reveals not only how the industry worked and which titles were in greatest demand, but the human scale of its operations. A Literary Tour de France is literally that. Darnton captures the hustle, picaresque comedy, and occasional risk of Favarger's travels in the service of books, and in the process offers an engaging, immersive, and unforgettable narrative of book culture at a critical moment in France's history.
Author: Robert Darnton
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 9780393314427
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 468
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Book Description
Robert Darnton's work is one of the main reasons that cultural history has become an exciting study central to our understanding of the past.
Author: Robert Darnton
Publisher: Baylor University Press
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 60
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Book Description
Darnton offers a reasoned defense of what the French revolutionaries were trying to achieve and urges us to look beyond political events to understand the idealism and universality of their goals.
Author: Robert Darnton
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 9780393057607
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 232
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Book Description
A collection of articles concentrated on the Enlightenment in France argues for a scaled-down interpretation of the significance of the movement.
Author: Peter Kropotkin
Publisher: Cosimo, Inc.
ISBN: 1605206601
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 628
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Book Description
Students of French history and lovers of rousing tales alike will find in this hard-to-find work an alternative look at the French Revolution from one of the great anarchist thinkers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.Communist advocate PETER ALEXEYEVICH KROPOTKIN (1842-1921) was deemed "perfect" by Oscar Wilde, who described Kropotkin as a man with "a soul of that beautiful white Christ which seems coming out of Russia." Here, he takes the first serious look at the economic side of the popular Gallic uprising, exploring: the spirit of the revolt the declaration of the rights of man the fears of the middle classes financial difficulties of the Revolution feudal legislation in 1790 social demands and arbitrary taxation the problems with paper money schemes for the socialization of the means of subsistence and exchange and much more.Originally published in two small volumes, this replica edition combines the authorized 1927 American publication into one book that may change how modern readers think about the French Revolution.
Author: Alexis de Tocqueville
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 364
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Book Description
Author: Ian Davidson
Publisher: Profile Books
ISBN: 1847659365
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 306
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Book Description
The fall of the Bastille on July 14, 1789 has become the commemorative symbol of the French Revolution. But this violent and random act was unrepresentative of the real work of the early revolution, which was taking place ten miles west of Paris, in Versailles. There, the nobles, clergy and commoners of France had just declared themselves a republic, toppling a rotten system of aristocratic privilege and altering the course of history forever. The Revolution was led not by angry mobs, but by the best and brightest of France's growing bourgeoisie: young, educated, ambitious. Their aim was not to destroy, but to build a better state. In just three months they drew up a Declaration of the Rights of Man, which was to become the archetype of all subsequent Declarations worldwide, and they instituted a system of locally elected administration for France which still survives today. They were determined to create an entirely new system of government, based on rights, equality and the rule of law. In the first three years of the Revolution they went a long way toward doing so. Then came Robespierre, the Terror and unspeakable acts of barbarism. In a clear, dispassionate and fast-moving narrative, Ian Davidson shows how and why the Revolutionaries, in just five years, spiralled from the best of the Enlightenment to tyranny and the Terror. The book reminds us that the Revolution was both an inspiration of the finest principles of a new democracy and an awful warning of what can happen when idealism goes wrong.
Author: Colin Jones
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198715951
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 592
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Book Description
The day of 9 Thermidor (27 July 1794) is universally acknowledged as a major turning-point in the history of the French Revolution. Maximilien Robespierre, the most prominent member of the Committee of Public Safety, was planning to destroy one of the most dangerous plots that the Revolution had faced.
