The French Revolution

by Thomas Carlyle, A.H.R. Ball (Abridged by)

Overview

The book that established Thomas Carlyle’s reputation when first published in 1837, this spectacular historical masterpiece has since been accepted as the standard work on the subject. It combines a shrewd insight into character, a vivid realization of the picturesque, and a singular ability to bring the past to blazing life, making it a reading experience as thrilling as any novel. As John D. Rosenberg observes in his Introduction, The French Revolution is “one of the grand poems of [Carlyle’s] century, yet its poetry consists in being everywhere scrupulously rooted in historical fact.”

This Modern Library Paperback Classics edition, complete and unabridged, is unavailable anywhere else.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780486146829
Publisher:	Dover Publications
Publication date:	04/26/2012
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	272
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

David R. Sorensen is Professor of English at Saint Joseph's University and Associate Director of its Honors Program. He is a senior editor of the Duke-Edinburgh Collected Letters of Thomas and Jane Welsh Carlyle (1970-ongoing), and has edited with K. J. Fielding, Carlyle's The French Revolution (Oxford, 1989) and Jane Carlyle: New Selected Letters (Ashgate, 2004), with Rodger L. Tarr, The Carlyles at Home and Abroad (Ashgate, 2004), and with Brent E. Kinser, Carlyle's On Heroes and Hero-Worship (Yale, 2013). He is co-editor of Carlyle Studies Annual and a founding director of the Victorian Lives and Letters Consortium.

Brent E. Kinser is Professor of English and department Head at Western Carolina University. He is the author of The American Civil War and the Shaping of British Democracy (Ashgate, 2011), and the coordinating editor of The Carlyle Letters Online, the electronic edition of The Collected Letters of Thomas and Jane Welsh Carlyle, for which he serves as an editor. He is co-editor (with David R. Sorensen) of Carlyle's On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History (New Haven, 2013) He is co-editor Carlyle Studies Annual and a founding director of the Victorian Lives and Letters Consortium.

Mark Engel is a professional editor and independent scholar. He has edited with Michael K. Goldberg and Joel J. Brattin, Carlyle's On, Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History (Berkeley, 1993) and with Rodger L. Tarr, Sartor Resartus (Berkeley, 2000).

Read an Excerpt

CHAPTER II. REALISED IDEALS. SuOH a changed France have we; and a changed Louis. Changed, truly; and farther than thou yet seest! To the eye of History many things, in that sick-room of Louis, are now visible, which to the Courtiers there present were invisible. For indeed it is well said, 'in every object there ' is inexhaustible meaning; the eye sees in it what the eye ' brings means of seeing.' To Newton and to Newton's Dog Diamond, what a different pair of Universes; while the painting on the optical retina of both was, most likely, the same! Let the Reader here, in this sick-room of Louis, endeavour to look with the mind too. Time was when men could (so to speak) of a given man, by nourishing and decorating him with fit appliances, to the due pitch, make themselves a King, almost as the Bees do; and what was still more to the purpose, loyally obey him when .made. The man so nourished and decorated, thenceforth named royal, does verily bear rule; and is said, and even thought, to be, for example, 'prosecuting conquests in Flanders,' when he lets himself like luggage be carried thither: and no light luggage; covering miles of road. For he has his unblushing Chateauroux, with her bandboxes and rouge-pots, at his side; so that, at every new station, a wooden gallery must be run up between their lodgings. He has not only his Maison-Bouche, and Valetaille without end, but his very Troop of Players, with their pasteboard 1744-74. coulisses, thunder-barrels, their kettles, fiddles, stage-wardrobes, portable larders (and chaffering and quarrelling enough); all mounted in wagons, tumbrils, second-hand chaises, sufficient not to conquer Flanders, but the patience of the world. Withsuch a flood of loud jingling appurtenances does he lumber along, prosecuting his conquests...

Table of Contents

Preface
Introduction
Carlyle's Conception of History
The French Revolution: Characteristics, Style
Dates in the Life of Carlyle
Chief Works quoted by Carlyle
Death of Louis XV; France in 1774
The New Age
a. Louis XVI
b. The People
The Notables
The States-General
The Third Estate
To Arms!
Fall of the Bastille
Revolution
The Menads
The King at Paris
The Army
The Clubs
Mirabeau
Flight of the King
The Constitution
Europe
The Jacobins
The Marseillese
The Swiss
The Commune
The September Massacres
The Cannonade of Valmy
Execution of Louis XVI
Girondins and Mountain
The Committees
The New Calendar
Death of Marat
Marie-Antoinette
The Reign of Terror
The Feast of Reason
The New Paris
Danton, No Weakness
Feast of the Être Suprême
Robespierre
Decline of Revolution
The Army
The Whiff of Grapeshot
Finis
Appendixes
Chronological Table
The Republican Calendar
The House of Bourbon
Index of Proper Names
Glossary
Maps
Central Paris during the Revolution
The Campaign of 1792

Editorial Reviews

"This edition makes the work decipherable in ways it otherwise isn't." — Barton Swaim, Wall Street Journal

"Excellent edition" — Years Work in English Studies, 2021

From the Publisher