Book picks similar to
The Frankenstein of 1790 and Other Lost Chapters from Revolutionary France by Julia V. Douthwaite
france
history
__grand-siècle_siècle-des-lumières
__révolution-française
Into A Paris Quartier: Reine Margot's Chapel and Other Haunts of St.-Germain
Diane Johnson - 2005
Now, the paperback edition of her delightful book will take even more Americans to the richly historic part of the city that has always attracted us, from Ben Franklin in the 18th-century to raffish novelist Henry Miller in the 20th.Modern St.-Germain is lively and prosperous, and fifty years ago its heady mix of jazz and existentialism defined urbane cool, but Johnson takes a longer view. "Beside the shades of Jean-Paul Sartre and Edith Piaf," she writes, "there is another crowd of resident ghosts... misty figures in plumed hats whose fortunes and passions were enacted among these beautiful, imposing buildings." From her kitchen window, she looks out on a chapel begun by Reine Margot, wife of Henri IV; nearby streets are haunted by the shades of two sinister cardinals, Mazarin and Richelieu, as well as four famed queens and at least five kings. Delacroix, Corot, Ingres, David, and Manet all lived in St.-Germain; Oscar Wilde died there; and everybody who was anybody visited sooner or later.With her delicious imagination and wry, opinionated voice, Diane Johnson makes a companionable and fascinating guide to a classic neighborhood as cosmopolitan as it is quintessentially French.
The Cultural Origins of the French Revolution
Roger Chartier - 1990
First, while acknowledging the seminal contribution of Daniel Mornet’s Les origens intellectuelles de la Révolution française (1935), he synthesizes the half-century of scholarship that has created a sociology of culture for Revolutionary France, from education reform through widely circulated printed literature to popular expectations of government and society. Chartier goes beyond Mornet’s work, not be revising that classic text but by raising questions that would not have occurred to its author.Chartier’s second contribution is to reexamine the conventional wisdom that there is a necessary link between the profound cultural transformation of the eighteenth century (generally characterized as the Enlightenment) and the abrupt Revolutionary rupture of 1789. The Cultural Origins of the French Revolution is a major work by one of the leading scholars in the field and is likely to set the intellectual agenda for future work on the subject.
The Valley of Heaven and Hell - Cycling in the Shadow of Marie-Antoinette
Susie Kelly - 2011
Bantam 2003) and driven the entire circumference of France (A Perfect Circle, pub. Bantam 2006), but cyclist she is not. By suggesting an electric bicycle to get her through the worst of the uphill slogs, her husband persuades her that travelling on 2 wheels is by far the best way to see the little-known, virtually undocumented part of France they plan to explore. And so, with not a few mishaps and misgivings, it turns out.The Valley of Heaven and Hell is a quirky, highly entertaining and endearing mix of personal travel adventure and French history. Alongside her energetic and resourceful husband (when he’s not zooming on ahead), Susie follows the identical route taken by Marie-Antoinette and Louis XVI when they tried to escape from the Revolution, and their journey back to their executions. After a hair-raising journey through Paris that nearly ends in her own execution by traffic, Susie finds an area of calm waterways and tranquil countryside bursting with history. Idyllic territory for cyclists. Her route takes her from Versailles to the vineyards and champagne cellars of Epernay and Reims then through the Marne valley, the scene of unimaginable horror and devastation during World War 1.In three weeks Susie and Terry cycle 500 miles, dining sometimes in luxury and often on weird makeshift meals in their tent. Along the way there are traumas, epiphanies, occasional matrimonial disagreements and the odd glass of champagne. Keeping up appearances amongst the petite, chic French at some of Susie’s more luxurious stops creates some serious fashion moments, tempered, as always, by Susie’s good humour and resilience.
The Real Midnight In Paris: A History of the Expatriate
Paul Brody - 2012
Scott Fitzgerald, Ezra Pound, and so many more collectively made up this artistic period in time. In this book, you will learn how and why the movement started, what it was like to be a writer in Paris, and what led to its fall.A list of essential reading from the period is also included in the book.
Tilli's Story: My Thoughts Are Free
Lorna Collier - 2004
The small, poignant touches are riveting." -"Kirkus Discoveries""I think about what I want and what makes me happy, But orderly and quietly to myself. Because my thoughts tear down fortresses and walls, My thoughts are free. -German folk song, author unknown"The beautiful, safe, joyful places in young Tilli's imagination were her only refuge from the bombing that tore through the sky above her during World War II. Her thoughts were her only freedom from Hitler's Nazi tyranny, and they were her strength to survive after the war ended, when Russians invaded her tiny farming village in eastern Germany; forced her into months of hiding in a dark attic crawlspace; and took her innocence, her childhood, and nearly her life.Tilli's dreams-of a time when she could think and act freely, and travel, work, write, worship, and live however she wished-were what fueled the sixteen-year-old to courageously and single-handedly escape the terror of Stalin's harsh Communist rule and create her own happy ending in a free America.This true tale of sorrow and terror, hope and triumph, is Tilli's story-but it's also the story of the unthinkable suffering and untold bravery of countless innocent children who have lived through a war and its aftermath.
Letters of Mistress Henley Published by Her Friend
Isabelle de Charrière - 1784
Charriere presents six letters penned by a Mistriss Henley, who has chosen a decent and affectionate man as her life's companion only to discover that she cannot bear sharing his life. An immediate success on its publication in 1784, Mistriss Henley was greeted with acclaim and controversy: one reader called the book "literarily excellent" but "morally dangerous in various ways." Remarkable for its empathy for both spouses, Mistriss Henley is not only a moving work of fiction but also one of the most modern novels of its day.
Jean Christophe: in Paris: The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House
Romain Rolland - 2005
Quality assurance was conducted on each of these books in an attempt to remove books with imperfections introduced by the digitization process. Though we have made best efforts - the books may have occasional errors that do not impede the reading experience. We believe this work is culturally important and have elected to bring the book back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide.
The Sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald: The Loss of the Largest Ship on the Great Lakes
Charles River Editors - 2014
And all that remains is the faces and the names of the wives and the sons and the daughters.” – Gordon Lightfoot, “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” The Great Lakes have claimed countless thousands of vessels over the course of history, but its biggest and most famous victim was the SS Edmund Fitzgerald, the largest ship of its day to sail the Great Lakes and still the largest to lie below Lake Superior’s murky depths. The giant ore freighter was intentionally built "within a foot of the maximum length allowed for passage through the soon-to-be completed Saint Lawrence Seaway.” but despite its commercial purpose, the Edmund Fitzgerald was also one of the most luxurious ships to ever set sail in the Great Lakes. One person who sailed aboard the ship recounted, “Stewards treated the guests to the entire VIP routine. The cuisine was reportedly excellent and snacks were always available in the lounge. A small but well stocked kitchenette provided the drinks. Once each trip, the captain held a candlelight dinner for the guests, complete with mess-jacketed stewards and special ‘clamdigger’ punch.” Indeed, when it was completed in 1957, the Edmund Fitzgerald was nearly 730 feet long and dubbed “Queen of the Lakes”, and it was so popular that people would wait along the shores to catch a glimpse of the famous boat. The ship had already earned various safety awards and never suffered a serious problem when it set sail from Superior, Wisconsin with over 26,000 tons of freight on November 9, 1975 and headed for a steel mill near Detroit. During that afternoon, however, the National Weather Service, which had earlier predicted that a storm would miss Lake Superior, revised its estimates and issued gale warnings. Over the course of the next 24 hours, the Fitzgerald and other ships in Lake Superior tried to weather the storm, but by the early evening hours of November 10, the Fitzgerald’s captain radioed other ships to report that the ship was having some problems and was taking on water. In the ship’s last radio contact, the captain reported that the ship and crew were “holding our own,” but just what happened next still remains a mystery to this day. Minutes after that last contact, the Edmund Fitzgerald stopped replying on the radio and no longer showed up on radar, indicating that it sank, but no distress signal was ever given, suggesting something catastrophic happened almost instantly. At the time the ship went down with all 29 of its crew, winds had reached about 60 miles per hour, waves were about 25 feet high, and rogue waves were measured at 35 feet. The wreck of the ship was found within days, and the fact that it was found in two large pieces suggest it broke apart on the surface of the lake, but it’s still unclear how that happened. Since her loss with all hands, people from all walks of life have weighed in on the ship’s fate, including official investigators, sailors, and meteorologists, but no one has yet to come to a clear conclusion about what exactly went wrong. Various theories have since been put forth, attributing the sinking to everything from rogue waves to the flooding of the cargo hold, but the loss made clear that more stringent regulations on shipping in the Great Lakes was necessary, and it was also a painful reminder of the dangers of maritime travel.
The Allure of the Archives
Arlette Farge - 1989
While combing through two-hundred-year-old judicial records from the Archives of the Bastille, historian Farge was struck by the extraordinarily intimate portrayal they provided of the lives of the poor in pre-Revolutionary France, especially women. She was seduced by the sensuality of old manuscripts and by the revelatory power of voices otherwise lost. In The Allure of the Archives, she conveys the exhilaration of uncovering hidden secrets and the thrill of venturing into new dimensions of the past. Originally published in 1989, Farge’s classic work communicates the tactile, interpretive, and emotional experience of archival research while sharing astonishing details about life under the Old Regime in France. At once a practical guide to research methodology and an elegant literary reflection on the challenges of writing history, this uniquely rich volume demonstrates how surrendering to the archive’s allure can forever change how we understand the past.
The Popes of Avignon: A Century in Exile
Edwin Mullins - 2007
This narrative history masterfully weaves together the sweeping events surrounding the so-called “Babylonian captivity” of the popes into the broader story of 14th-century Europe, a turbulent time of transition between Middle Ages and Renaissance when seven successive popes resided in Avignon in the south of France.
Emilie Du Chatelet: Daring Genius of the Enlightenment
Judith P. Zinsser - 2006
After marrying a marquis at the age of eighteen, she proceeded to fulfill the prescribed-and delightfully frivolous-role of a French noblewoman of her time. But she also challenged it, conducting a highly visible affair with a commoner, writing philosophical works, and translating Newton's Principia while pregnant by a younger lover. With the sweep of Galileo's Daughter, Emilie Du Châtelet captures the charm, glamour, and brilliance of this magnetic woman.
Anquetil, Alone
Paul Fournel - 2012
His womanising and frank admissions of doping appalled 1960s French society, even as his five Tour de France wins enthralled it. Paul Fournel was besotted with him from the start ("Too young to understand, I was nevertheless old enough to admire") and followed Anquetil's career with the passion of a fan and the eye of a poet. In this stunningly original biography of a complex and divisive character, Fournel - author of the seminal Vélo (or Need for the Bike) blends the story of Anquetil's life with scenes from his own, to create a classic of cycling literature.
Citizen Somerville
Bobby Martini - 2010
Over sixty men were murdered, including the leader of the Winter Hill Gang, James "Buddy" McLean. The leadership of one of the most influential non-Italian crime organizations in the United States was inherited by his childhood friend, Howard T. "Howie" Winter. In CITIZEN SOMERVILLE the events during his tenure offer a true picture of an era in Boston's pre-Whitey Bulger history when the streets were protected by a close-knit group of Irish-Italian "businessmen." The son of one of Winter's closest friends, BOBBY MARTINI has laid his own history bare to depict a life of survival in the rough streets of Somerville, stopping just short of entering the Mob life. The death of Martini's two brothers as well as the murders and suicides of scores of others reveal the darker personal side of a small New England town. CITIZEN SOMERVILLE slices a layer deeper than a crime memoir by allowing a usually ostracized faction to speak - the women. After decades of silence, three strong and very different females lift the Mob veil and voice their own struggle to survive in Somerville's criminal circle. Often painfully poignant and yet frequently hilarious, CITIZEN SOMERVILLE is a microscopic view of a generation struggling to walk the moral tightrope between societal decency and the loyalty of criminality.
Madame du Barry: The Wages of Beauty
Joan Haslip - 1991
A courtesan, she became Louis XV's official mistress and was fêted as one of France's most beautiful women. On Louis XV's death she became vulnerable to those secretly longing for her downfall. Marie Antoinette had her imprisoned for a year, and in 1793 she was executed by the Revolutionary Tribunal for her aristocratic associations. Joan Haslip's classic biography shares the extraordinary and ultimately tragic story of du Barry's life and, in turn, illustrates the dazzling world of the eighteenth century royal court of France and the horrors of the Revolution.