The Forbidden Best-Sellers of Pre-Revolutionary France

by Robert Darnton

The best-selling books in France during the waning decades of the ancien regime were not the outlawed works of great philosophers such as Voltaire and Rousseau, but other books, also banned by the government, written and sold "under the cloak." These formed a libertine literature that was a crucial part of the culture of dissent in the ancien regime. Robert Darnton explores the cultural and political significance of these "bad" books and introduces readers to three of the most influential illegal best-sellers, from which he includes substantial excerpts.

Available editions of The Forbidden Best-Sellers of Pre-Revolutionary France

	9780393037203, Hardcover, W W Norton & Co Inc, 1995 $5.00 (Very Good ) Other copies of 9780393037203

	9780393314427, Paperback, W W Norton & Co Inc, 1996 $9.50 (Very Good) Other copies of 9780393314427

Publisher Notes

THE BIG Question IN HISTORY OFTEN SEEM UNMANAGEABLE. WHAT CAUSES REVOLUTIONS? WHY DO VALUE SYSTEMS CHANGE? HOW DOES PUBLIC OPINION INFLUENCE EVENTS? THIS BOOK IS MEANT TO ADDRESS THOSE QUESTIONS BY BEGINNING WITH A QUERY OF A DIFFERENT ORDER, ONE THAT CAN BE ANSWEreD: WHAT DID THE FRENCH READ IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY?

Media Reviews

"His caution is as admirable as his diligence: he is like a plumber tracing a history of drips while refusing to admit the householder's demand to know that this or that particular drip led to the house-wrecking burst pipe. We may finish his book without grand conclusions, or specific answers, but we also finish with a sense that Darnton has at least supplied us with la question bien posée."

First Line

When the public hangman lacerated and burned forbidden books in the courtyard of the Palais de Justice in Paris, he paid tribute to the power of the printed word. But he often destroyed dummy copies, while the magistrates kept the originals--and they were less profligate with their autos-da-fe than is generally believed.

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