Writer's Lot Culture and Revolution in Eighteenth-Century France
Produktdetaljer
Biografisk notat
Robert Darnton is the author of numerous award-winning books on French cultural history, including The Revolutionary Temper. A MacArthur Fellow, chevalier in the LĂŠgion dâhonneur, and winner of the National Humanities Medal and the National Book Critics Circle Award, Darnton is the Carl H. Pforzheimer University Professor and Director of the University Library, Emeritus, at Harvard University.Does a great deal to shed illusions that the budding fourth estate of the prerevolutionary era was made up entirely of radical revolutionariesâŚconvincingly doubles down on the claim that the cutthroat, competitive milieu in which this reserve army of hacks and scribblers moved made them uniquely placed to take advantage of the disorder and uncertainty that the French Revolution produced.
- Bartolomeo Sala, Jacobin
How has Darnton revised his arguments fifty-four years later? Partly, by examining in detail the pre-revolutionary careers of selected writers who succeeded or failed before 1789, and their fortunes during the revolution. This allows him to display once more his marvellous eye for colour and apposite anecdotesâŚDarntonâs achievement is to refine his original argument while retaining his essential insights, and presenting them, as always, in superb prose.
- Munro Price, Literary Review
Darnton began his brilliant career by insisting on the part the French Grub Street writers played in the ideological origins of the French Revolution. He remains unpersuaded 'by historians who argue that some form of Enlightenment discourse brought down the ancien rĂŠgime and determined the course of the Revolution.' After dedicating decades to studying 'printing, pirating, censorship, book-selling and the politics of publishing', Darnton has finally come full circle back to the writers.
- Ruth Scurr, The Spectator
A fresh and vital history, as well as an appealing romanticization of the freelancerâs lot.
Publishers Weekly
In this gorgeously written and original study, one of our greatest historians returns to one of his greatest themes: the passage of French authors from the literary world of the Old Regime into the French Revolution. Robert Darnton also offers precious reflections on his own previous work.
- David Bell, author of <i>Men on Horseback</i> and coeditor of <i>French Revolutionary Lives</i>,
The writerâs life has never been more brilliantly portrayed than in this vivid book by Robert Darnton, our leading historian of all things literary in eighteenth-century France.
- Lynn Hunt, coauthor of <i>The French Revolution and Napoleon: Crucible of the Modern World</i>,
Robert Darnton has set the capstone on a brilliant career of writing about the French Enlightenment and Revolution. Full of color, sparklingly written, and deeply thought through, this book will be read with enjoyment and profit by anyone interested in the pains, perils, and pleasures of being a published author from any age.
- Colin Jones, author of <i>The Fall of Robespierre: 24 Hours in Revolutionary Paris</i>,
Darntonâs trademark verve makes for a gripping account of how prerevolutionary French writers thought about authorship. Combining characteristically rich research on eighteenth-century France with a moving series of autobiographical reflections, this retrospect of our premier historian of intellectual life offers pleasures on every page.
- Leah Price, author of <i>What We Talk About When We Talk About Books</i>,
A lifetime's study of the world of hacks, books, and literature in prerevolutionary France has not exhausted Robert Darnton's ability to offer fresh insights into its complexities. As always, his writing makes his conclusions a pleasure to absorb.
- William Doyle, author of <i>The Oxford History of the French Revolution</i>,
A pioneering social history of French writers during the Age of Revolution, from a world-renowned scholar and National Book Critics Circle Award winner.
In eighteenth-century France, writers emerged as a new kind of power. They stirred passions, shaped public opinion, and helped topple the Bourbon monarchy. Whether scribbling in dreary garrets or philosophizing in salons, they exerted so much influence that the state kept them under constant surveillance. A few became celebrities, but most were hacks, and none could survive without patrons or second jobs.
The Writerâs Lot is the first book to move beyond individual biography to take the measure of âliterary Franceâ as a whole. Historian Robert Darnton parses forgotten letters, manuscripts, police reports, private diaries, and newspapers to show how writers made careers and how they fit into the social orderâor didnât. Reassessing long-standing narratives of the French Revolution, Darnton shows that to be a reject was not necessarily to be a Jacobin: the toilers of the Parisian Grub Street sold their words to revolutionary publishers and government ministers alike. And while literary France contributed to the downfall of the ancien rĂŠgime, it did so through its example more than its ideals: the contradiction inherent in the Republic of Lettersâin theory, open to all; in practice, dominated by a well-connected cliqueâdramatized the oppressiveness of the French social system.
Darnton brings his trademark rigor and investigative eye to the character of literary France, from the culture war that pitted the âdecadentâ Voltaire against the âradicalâ Rousseau to struggling scribblers, booksellers, censors, printers, and royal spies. Their lives, little understood until now, afford rare insight into the ferment of French society during the Age of Revolution.