The French Revolution A History was written by the
Scottish essayist,
philosopher, and
historian Thomas Carlyle. The three-volume work, first published in
1837 (with a revised edition in print by
1857), charts the course of the
French Revolution from
1789 to the height of the
Reign of Terror (
1793-
4) and culminates in
1795. A massive undertaking which draws together a wide variety of sources, Carlyle's history—despite the unusual style in which it is written—is considered to be an authoritative account of the early course of the Revolution.
Carlyle happened upon the idea of writing a general history of the French Revolution when John Stuart Mill, a friend of his, found himself caught up in other projects and unable to meet the terms of a contract he had signed with his publisher for just such a work. Mill therefore proposed that Carlyle produce the work instead; Mill even sent his friend a library of books and other materials concerning the Revolution, and by 1834 Carlyle was working furiously on the project. When he had completed the first volume of his epic account, Carlyle sent his only completed manuscript of the text to Mill, whose maid famously mistook it for trash and had it burned. It was said that Carlyle then rewrote the entire manuscript from memory, achieving what he described as a book that came "direct and flamingly from the heart."[1]
The book immediately established Carlyle's reputation as an important 19th century intellectual. It also served as a major influence on a number of his contemporaries, most notably, perhaps, upon Charles Dickens, who compulsively read and re-read the book while producing A Tale of Two Cities, one of the novelist's most popular works.
As an historical account, The French Revolution has been both enthusiastically praised and bitterly criticized for its style of writing, which is highly unorthodox within historiography. Most historians attempt to assume a neutral, detached tone of writing, in the tradition of Edward Gibbon. Carlyle unfolds his history by often writing in present-tense first-person plural as though he and the reader were observers, indeed almost participants, on the streets of Paris at the fall of the Bastille or the public execution of Louis XVI. This, naturally, involves the reader by simulating the history itself instead of solely recounting historical events.
