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The Writer's Lot: Culture and Revolution in Eighteenth-Century France

By (author) Robert Darnton

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A pioneering social history of French writers during the Age of Revolution, from a world-renowned scholar and National Book Critics Circle Award winner. In eighteenth-century France, writers emerged as a new kind of power. They stirred passions, shaped public opinion, and helped topple the Bourbon monarchy. Whether scribbling in dreary garrets or philosophizing in salons, they exerted so much influence that the state kept them under constant surveillance. A few became celebrities, but most were hacks, and none could survive without patrons or second jobs. The Writerâ€™s Lot is the first book to move beyond individual biography to take the measure of â€œliterary Franceâ€ as a whole. Historian Robert Darnton parses forgotten letters, manuscripts, police reports, private diaries, and newspapers to show how writers made careers and how they fit into the social orderâ€”or didnâ€™t. Reassessing long-standing narratives of the French Revolution, Darnton shows that to be a reject was not necessarily to be a Jacobin: the toilers of the Parisian Grub Street sold their words to revolutionary publishers and government ministers alike. And while literary France contributed to the downfall of the ancien rÃ©gime, it did so through its example more than its ideals: the contradiction inherent in the Republic of Lettersâ€”in theory, open to all; in practice, dominated by a well-connected cliqueâ€”dramatized the oppressiveness of the French social system. Darnton brings his trademark rigor and investigative eye to the character of literary France, from the culture war that pitted the â€œdecadentâ€ Voltaire against the â€œradicalâ€ Rousseau to struggling scribblers, booksellers, censors, printers, and royal spies. Their lives, little understood until now, afford rare insight into the ferment of French society during the Age of Revolution.

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