The French Revolution: A History

Description

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.

John D. Rosenberg is the William Peterfield Trent Professor of English at Columbia University, where he teaches Victorian literature and has chaired the undergraduate program in literature humanities. He is the author of The Darkening Glass: A Portrait of Ruskin's Genius; The Fall of Camelot: A Study of Tennyson's "Idylls of the King"; and Carlyle and the Burden of History.

"No novelist has made his creations live for us more thoroughly than Carlyle has made the men of the French Revolution." -George Eliot