Will Durant - The Age of Napoleon

WILL DURANT was born in North Adams, Massachusetts, on November 5, 1885. He was educated in the Catholic parochial schools there and in Kearny, New Jersey, and thereafter in St. Peters (Jesuit) College, Jersey City, New Jersey, and Columbia University. New York. For a summer he served as a cub reporter on the New York Journal, in 1907, but finding the work too strenuous for his temperament;, he settled down at Seton Hall College, South Orange, New Jersey, to teach Latin, French, English, and geometry (190711). He entered the seminary at Seton Hall in 1909, but withdrew in 1911 for reasons he has described in his book Transition. He passed from this quiet seminary to the most radical circles in New York, and became (191113) the teacher of the Ferrer Modern School, an experiment in libertarian education. In 1912 he toured Europe at the invitation and expense of Alden Freeman, who had befriended him and now undertook to broaden his borders.

Returning to the Ferrer School, he fell in love with one of his pupilswho had been born Ida Kaufman in Russia on May 10, 1898resigned his position, and married her (1913). For four years he took graduate work at Columbia University, specializing in biology under Morgan and Calkins and in philosophy under Wood-bridge and Dewey. He received the doctorate in philosophy in 1917, and taught philosophy at Columbia University for one year. In 1914, in a Presbyterian church in New York, he began those lectures on history, literature, and philosophy that, continuing twice weekly for thirteen years, provided the initial material for his later works.

The unexpected success of The Story of Philosophy (1926) enabled him to retire from teaching in 1927. Thenceforth, except for some incidental essays Mr. and Mrs. Durant gave nearly all their working hours (eight to fourteen daily) to The Story of Civilization. To better prepare themselves they toured Europe in 1927, went around the world in 1930 to study Egypt, the Near East, India, China, and Japan, and toured the globe again in 1932 to visit Japan, Manchuria, Siberia, Russia, and Poland. These travels provided the background for Our Oriental Heritage (1935) as the first volume in The Story of Civilization. Several further visits to Europe prepared for Volume 2, The Life of Greece (1939), and Volume 3, Caesar and Christ (1944). In 1948, six months in Turkey, Iraq, Iran, Egypt, and Europe provided perspective for Volume 4, The Age of Faith (1950). In 1951 Mr. and Mrs. Durant returned to Italy to add to a lifetime of gleanings for Volume 5, The Renaissance (1953); and in 1954 further studies in Italy, Switzerland, Germany, France, and England opened new vistas for Volume 6, The Reformation (1957).

Mrs. Durants share in the preparation of these volumes became more and more substantial with each year, until in the case of Volume 7, The Age of Reason Begins (1961), it was so great that justice required the union of both names on the title page. And so it was on The Age of Louis XIV (1963), The Age of Voltaire (1965), and Rousseau and Revolution (winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 1968).

The publication of Volume 11, The Age of Napoleon, in 1975 concluded five decades of achievement. Ariel Durant died on October 25, 1981, at the age of 83; Will Durant died 13 days later, on November 7, aged 96. Their last published work was A Dual Autobiography (1977). spective for Volume IV, The Age of Faith (1950). In 1951 Mr. and Mrs. Durant returned to Italy to add to a lifetime of gleanings for Volume V, The Renaissance (1953); and in 1954 further studies in Italy, Switzerland, Germany, France, and England opened new vistas for Volume VI, The Reformation (1957).

Mrs. Durants share in the preparation of these volumes became more and more substantial with each year, until in the case of Volume VII, The Age of Reason Begins (1961), it was so great that justice required the union of both names on the title page. And so it has been on The Age of Louis XIV, The Age of Voltaire, Rousseau and Revolution, and now on The Age of Napoleon.

The publication of The Age of Napoleon concludes five decades of achievement.

to editions referred to in the Notes

ACTON, JOHN EMERICH, LORD, The French Revolution. London, 1910.

ADAMSON, ROBERT, Fichte. Freeport, N.Y., 1969.

ALTAMIRA, RAFAEL, A History of Spain. Princeton, N.J., 1955.

, History of Spanish Civilization. London, 1930.

ARNOLD, MATTHEW, Essays in Criticism, First and Second Series. New York: A. L. Burt, n.d.

AULARD, ALPHONSE, The French Revolution, 4v. New York, 1910.

, Christianity and the French Revolution. Boston, 1927.

AUSTEN, JANE, The Complete Novels. Modern Library.

, Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility. Modern Library.

BALCARRES, LORD Evolution of Italian Sculpture. London, 1909.

BARNES, HARRY ELMER, An Economic History of the Western World. New York, 1942.

BATESON, F. W., Wordsworth: A Re-interpretation. London, 1954.

BEARD, CHARLES, Introduction to the English Historians. New York, 1927.

BECKER, CARL, The Heavenly City of the Eighteenth Century Philosophers. New Haven, Conn., 1951.

BEETHOVEN, LUDWIG VAN, Letters, translated and edited by Emily Anderson, 3v. New York, 1961.

BELL, E. T., Men of Mathematics. New York, 1937.

BELLOC, HILAIRE, Danton. New York, 1899.

BENN, ALFRED W., History of English Rationalism in the Nineteenth Century, 2V. London, 1906.

BENTHAM, JEREMY, A Fragment on Government. Oxford University Press, 1948.

, Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation. New York, 1948.

BERNAL, J. D., Science in History. London, 1957.

BERRY, ARTHUR, A Short History of Astronomy. New York, 1909.

BERTAUT, JULES, Napoleon in His Own Words. Chicago, 1916.

BERTRAND, COMTE HENRI G., Napoleon at St. Helena. New York, 1952.

BLAKE, WILLIAM, Poems and Prophecies. Everymans Library. -, Selected Poems. London, 1947.

BOAS, GEORGE, French Philosophers of the Romantic Period. New York, 1964.

BORROW, GEORGE, The Bible in Spain. London, 1908.

BOURGUIGNON, JEAN, Napolon Bonaparte, 2v. Paris: ditions Nationales, 1936.

BOURRIENNE, LOUIS- ANTOINE FAUVELET DE, Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, 4v. New York, 1890.

BOWEN, MARJORIE, Patriotic Lady: Emma, Lady Hamilton. New York, 1936.

BRANDES, GEORG, Main Currents in Nineteenth Century Literature, 6v. New York, 1915.

Wolfgang Goethe, tr. Allen Porterfield, 2v. New York, 1924.

BREED, LEWIS, The Opinions and Reflections of Napoleon. Boston, 1926.

BRETT, G. S., History of Psychology. London, 1953.

BRINTON, CRANE, The Jacobins. New York, 1930.

BRION, MARCEL, Daily Life in the Vienna of Mozart and Schubert. New York, 1962.

BROCKWAY, W., and H. WEINSTOCK, Men of Music. New York, 1939.

, and B. WINER, A Second Treasury of the Worlds Great Letters. New York, 1941.

BRUCKNER, A., A Literary History of Russia. London, 1908.

BURKE, THOMAS, English Night Life. New York, 1941.

BYRON, GEORGE GORDON, LORD, Works, I-vol. ed. New York: George Leavitt, n.d.

CAIRD, EDWARD, Hegel. Edinburgh, 1911.

Cambridge History of Poland, 2v. Cambridge, Eng., 1950.