French and Their Revolution, The: Selected Writings - Softcover

Cobb, Richard. David Gilmour, Editor

3.69

13 ratings by Goodreads

9780719554612: French and Their Revolution, The: Selected Writings

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0719554616 ISBN 13: 9780719554612

Publisher: The New Press, 1998

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These writings on the French Revolution discuss aspects of the revolutionary mentality in France; popular movements, popular protest and repression; and counter-revolutionary tendencies. The book includes a list of revolutionary figures, factions and historians and a revolutionary calendar.

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Review:

Rather than write yet another biography of Robespierre or another examination of Girondists or Jacobins, Francophile Richard Cobb chose to spend most of his career writing social histories of Revolutionary France.

These essays are broadly representative of his work, focusing on les petites gens, their influence on the revolution, and the revolution's influence on them. Several pieces provide wonderfully detailed portraits of the individuals inside the masses--within the army, the Sans-Culottes, or simply the common people. In the final essay, Cobb recounts the melancholy testimony of unwed mothers making a d�claration de grossesse to identify their seducer, request a place in the foundling hospital for their unborn children, or both, and points out that, for them, the revolution is not nearly as important as their unwanted pregnancies.

Though the lengthy quotations in French, usually without translations, may dismay the non-Francophone, detailed footnotes and a thorough index make this collection valuable to anyone interested in the French Revolution. --C.B. Delaney

About the Author:

Richard Cobb (1917–1996) was the author of many books, including The French and Their Revolution (The New Press), The People’s Armies, Something to Hold On To, and The End of the Line.

David Gilmour was one of Richard Cobb’s students at Oxford in the early 1970s and edited The French and Their Revolution (The New Press). His books include the prizewinning biographies Curzon and The Last Leopard: A Life of Guiseppe di Lampedusa.

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