Simon Schama - Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution

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CITIZENS

This is the most marvellous book I have read about the French Revolution in the last fifty years beautifully written, fully illustrated, and throughout enlightened with a great deal of compassion as well as humour Richard Cobb, The Times

Provocative, occasionally perverse and invariably magnificent his picture of France in 1793 and 1794 is a tragic masterpiece, never sentimental yet at times almost unbearable in its controlled passion Philip Ziegler, Daily Telegraph

A master storyteller Schamas tale is vivid, dramatic, thought-provoking Otto Friedrich, Time

Schama has written a stunning book, one that displays to the full his wide-ranging intelligence, marvellous prose style and acute visual sense what we have here is a rather special way of seeing, a rare ability to coax the past out of its surviving images Linda Colley, London Review of Books

His prose has a wide gamut of effects, eloquent, witty and moving, and is always intensely alive. There is a freshness in all he does, and above all a kind of ease P. N. Furbank, Sunday Telegraph

A work of rare brilliance that teems with vibrantly drawn portraits of the major participants, from General Lafayette to Robespierre His narrative never flags As no other recent historian of the revolution, Schama brings back to life the excitement and harrowing terror of an epochal human event Jim Miller, Newsweek

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Simon Schama is University Professor in Art History and History at Columbia University in New York, and one of the best-known scholars in Britain in any field. He is the prize-winning author of numerous books, including Dead Certainties (Unwarranted Speculations), Landscape and Memory, Rembrandts Eyes and three volumes of A History of Britain. He is also the writer-presenter of historical and art-historical documentaries for BBC Television. He lives outside New York City with his wife and children.

SIMON SCHAMA

A Chronicle of the French Revolution

PENGUIN BOOKS

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First published in the USA by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. 1989
First published in Great Britain by Viking 1989
Published in Penguin Books 1989
This edition published 2004
1

Copyright Simon Schama, 1989
Maps copyright Jean Paul Tremblay, 1989
All rights reserved

The moral right of the author has been asserted

Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject
to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent,
re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publishers
prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in
which it is published and without a similar condition including this
condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

EISBN: 9-780-1-4190604-1

FOR JACK PLUMB

Javais rvune rpublique que tout le monde
et adore. Je nai pu croire que les hommes
fussent si froces et si injustes.

CAMILLE DESMOULINS

to his wife from prison

April 4, 1794

Twas in truth an hour

Of universal ferment; mildest men

Were agitated; and commotions, strife

Of passion and opinion filld the walls

Of peaceful houses with unquiet sounds.

The soil of common life was at that time

Too hot to tread upon; oft said I then,

And not then only, what a mockery this

Of history; the past and that to come!

Now do I feel how I have been deceived,

Reading of Nations and their works, in faith,

Faith given to vanity and emptiness;

Oh! laughter for the Page that would reflect

To future times the face of what now is!

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH

The Prelude (1805 text)

Book IX 16477

Lhistoire accueille et renouvelle ces gloires dshrites;

elle donne nouvelle vie ces morts, les ressuscite. Sa justice

associe ainsi ceux qui nont pas vcu en mme temps, fait

rparation plusieurs qui navaient paru quun moment pour

disparatre. Ils vivent maintenant avec nous qui nous sentons

leurs parents, leurs amis. Ainsi se fait une famille, une cit

commune entre les vivants et les morts.

JULES MICHELET

Preface to Histoire

du XIXe Sicle, Vol. II