Robert Darnton is the author of many award-winning works in French cultural history, and taught for years at Princeton and Harvard. He is a chevalier in the Légion d’Honneur, and winner of the National Humanities Medal.
"A gripping portrait of the social, literary, and political
dynamics at work in prerevolutionary France."
*Michiko Kakutani - New York Times*
More specialized than The Great Cat Massacre, Darnton's latest still cogently demonstrates through tables, case studies, analysis and anecdotes just how different the pre-Revolutionary French were from postmodern Americans. In this second volume of a trilogy that began with The Business of Enlightenment, Darnton returns to the extensive publishing records of the Société typographique de Neuchâtel (STN) to trace the demand for books forbidden as a threat to morals and politics. These ``philosophical books,'' as they were called, included Rousseau's Social Contract. But with only one order in STN's records, it was hardly a bestseller. Accordingly, Darnton focuses on three widely disseminated books representing different popular genres: the pornographic Thérèse philosophe (probably by Marquis d'Argens); the philosophical utopian fantasy L'An 2440 by Louis-Sébastien Mercier; and the libelle (think libelous) Anecdotes sur Mme la comtesse du Barry ascribed to Mathieu-François Pidansat de Mairobert. His discussion of the distribution, reception and influence of these books is convincing and careful (general readers may find some sections on methodology a little too careful). Darnton sees these works as literature, not just sociological artifacts; and, if lengthy excerpts from L'An 2440 seem a little dated, those from Thérèse and Anecdotes are still ribaldly amusing. (Mar.)
"A gripping portrait of the social, literary, and political dynamics at work in prerevolutionary France." -- Michiko Kakutani - New York Times
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