Liberty: The Lives and Times of Six Women in Revolutionary France

Author:   Lucy Moore
Publisher:   HarperCollins Publishers
ISBN:  

9780007206025


Pages:   352
Publication Date:   02 July 2007
Format:   Paperback
Availability:   Manufactured on demand   Availability explained
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Liberty: The Lives and Times of Six Women in Revolutionary France


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Overview

The bestselling author of ‘Maharanis’ recreates the lives of six remarkable women who, in a time of violent revolution, leapt at the chance to exercise their considerable charm, intelligence and acumen, and make their mark on history. Germaine de Stael was an intellectual and an aristocrat, equally obsessed by politics and love affairs, who is said to have helped write the 1791 Constitution. Her fellow salonnière, Mme Roland, was a bourgeois housewife who became a fervent and influential revolutionary, until Robespierre’s regime sent her to the guillotine. While female intellectuals sipped wine in their salons, their working class counterparts patrolled the streets of Paris with pistols in their belts. Theroigne de Mericourt was an ill-treated mistress when she fell in love with revolutionary ideals and became an ardent anti-royalist until a mob beating by ‘sans-culottes’ ended her activism. The mob in question was made up of members of the Society of Revolutionary Republican Women, whose founder, Pauline Leon, agitated for women's rights. After the sans-culottes came the 'sans-chemises' – the glamorous (often skimpily clad) merveilleuses. Decadent Theresia Tallien combined sexual license with the secular amorality of the new Republic and reportedly helped engineer Robespierre's downfall. Her only rival for beauty was Juliette Recamier, whose elegance made her salons the most sought-after in Paris. When she refused Napoleon’s advances she was exiled from the city until his fall. Writing with vigour and passion, Lucy Moore reanimates these witty salonnières, fervent citoyennes and glittering merveilleuses to illuminate the brief, hopeful period in which the Revolution seemed to offer them the freedom they craved – and the ways in which it failed.

Full Product Details

Author:   Lucy Moore
Publisher:   HarperCollins Publishers
Imprint:   HarperPerennial
Dimensions:   Width: 12.90cm , Height: 3.40cm , Length: 19.80cm
Weight:   0.373kg
ISBN:  

9780007206025


ISBN 10:   000720602
Pages:   352
Publication Date:   02 July 2007
Audience:   General/trade ,  General
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Manufactured on demand   Availability explained
We will order this item for you from a manufactured on demand supplier.

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Reviews

'This book is excellent!Moore seems to have that rare gift of making a work both scholarly and yet as readable as a thriller.' Julian Fellowes 'A fascinating spectrum of female experience inside the Revolution and among the ruins it left behind! Liberty is extremely elegant and thought provoking!In mapping these six varied and overlapping lives, Moore vividly reminds us of the immense struggle there has been to establish political rights for women.' Daily Telegraph 'Lively, well-researched!it is no small task to bring together six such different lives against a historical background of rapid and complicated change but Lucy Moore has done it with skill and brio.' Sunday Telegraph 'Lively narrative full of pungent details!serious but entertaining.' Independent on Sunday 'Moore!catches the feeling of the turbulent times excellently!and never allows us to forget, as academic historians too often do, that people in the past were not abstractions, but men and women of flesh and blood, passions, enthusiasms, hopes, and fears.' Allan Massie, Literary Review 'Fascinating!It's the abundance of!details, and the verve with which she presents them, that makes Moore's story so enjoyable.' Sam Leith, Spectator 'This vivid, gripping book follows the fortunes of six women through one of history's most exciting -- and dangerous -- times.' Scotsman '!A marvellous book, which I would recommend to both the expert and the novice.' Julian Fellowes 'Engrossing.' Mail on Sunday 'Lucy Moore tells these stories with great agility!Nothing escapes her canny eye.' Daily Telegraph


'This book is excellent!Moore seems to have that rare gift of making a work both scholarly and yet as readable as a thriller.' Julian Fellowes 'A fascinating spectrum of female experience inside the Revolution and among the ruins it left behind! Liberty is extremely elegant and thought provoking!In mapping these six varied and overlapping lives, Moore vividly reminds us of the immense struggle there has been to establish political rights for women.' Daily Telegraph 'Lively, well-researched!it is no small task to bring together six such different lives against a historical background of rapid and complicated change but Lucy Moore has done it with skill and brio.' Sunday Telegraph


A fascinating, if disjointed, hagiography of six women often overlooked by the history books despite their behind-the-scenes involvement in the cultural affairs and politics of Revolutionary France.Moore (Maharinis, 2005, etc.) paints an absorbing portrait of a half-dozen viragos. Each would benefit from an in-depth individual biography: sans-culotte radical Pauline Leon; courtesan turned fatal beauty of the revolution Theroigne de Mericourt; Theresia de Fontenay, lover of one of the men who brought down Robespierre; Juliette Recamier, who survived the Revolution to run an influential early-19th-century salon; and Manon Roland, a republican who fell victim to the Reign of Terror. The best known is Germaine de Stael, whose salon served as a political bellwether in the turbulent days leading up to the revolution. Daughter of controversial finance minister Jacques Necker and wife of the Swedish ambassador to France, the well-placed de Stael enlisted the aid of Lafayette and other constitutionalists in 1792 to offer a shrewd plan for smuggling the king and queen out of France. In one of her many miscalculations, Marie-Antoinette sent a frosty message back saying that there was no very pressing reason for the royal family to leave Paris. Moore has a habit of offering gossipy, overly detailed digression, but she successfully contextualizes each of her subjects within a cultural framework - no small feat, given the exceedingly complex, rapidly changing social and sexual guidelines governing these women.The narrative round-robin can be chaotic. Still, an attractive book for those with an interest in women's history of the period. (Kirkus Reviews)


'This book is excellent!Moore seems to have that rare gift of making a work both scholarly and yet as readable as a thriller.' Julian Fellowes 'A fascinating spectrum of female experience inside the Revolution and among the ruins it left behind! Liberty is extremely elegant and thought provoking!In mapping these six varied and overlapping lives, Moore vividly reminds us of the immense struggle there has been to establish political rights for women.' Daily Telegraph 'Lively, well-researched!it is no small task to bring together six such different lives against a historical background of rapid and complicated change but Lucy Moore has done it with skill and brio.' Sunday Telegraph 'Lively narrative full of pungent details!serious but entertaining.' Independent on Sunday 'Moore!catches the feeling of the turbulent times excellently!and never allows us to forget, as academic historians too often do, that people in the past were not abstractions, but men and women of flesh and blood, passions, enthusiasms, hopes, and fears.' Allan Massie, Literary Review 'Fascinating!It's the abundance of!details, and the verve with which she presents them, that makes Moore's story so enjoyable.' Sam Leith, Spectator 'This vivid, gripping book follows the fortunes of six women through one of history's most exciting -- and dangerous -- times.' Scotsman '!A marvellous book, which I would recommend to both the expert and the novice.' Julian Fellowes 'Engrossing.' Mail on Sunday 'Lucy Moore tells these stories with great agility!Nothing escapes her canny eye.' Daily Telegraph


Author Information

Lucy Moore was born in 1970 and educated in Britain and the United States before reading history at Edinburgh University. She is the editor of Con Men and Cutpurses: Scenes from the Hogarthian Underworld, and author of the critically acclaimed The Thieves Opera: The Remarkable Lives and Deaths of Jonathan Wild, Thief-Taker, and Jack Sheppard, House-Breaker (Viking 1996) as well as Amphibious Thing: the Life of a Georgian Rake (Viking 2000) and Maharanis: The Lives and Times of Three Generations of Indian Princesses (Viking 2004). Maharanis has been reprinted six times, was an Evening Standard bestseller, and the top selling non-fiction title in WH Smith on paperback publication in summer 2005. Lucy is a regular book reviewer for the Observer and the Sunday Times. In April 2001, she was voted one of the ‘Top Twenty Young Writers in Britain’ by the Independent on Sunday and in the ‘Writers’ section of the New Statesman’s ‘Best of Young British’ issue. Television presenter work includes Nelson for Great Britons (BBC) and Kings in Waiting: Edward VII (BBC) plus a number of talking head appearances.

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