Description
An intimate history of an ordinary Parisian citizen and his neighbors that reflects on the origins and radicalization of the French Revolution. What was it like to live through one of the most transformational periods in world history? In The Glory and the Sorrow, eminent historian Timothy Tackett answers this question through a masterful recreation of the world of Adrien Colson, a minor lawyer who lived in Paris at the end of the Old Regime and during the first eight years of the French Revolution. Based on over a thousand letters written by Colson to his closest friend, this book vividly narrates everyday life for an "ordinary citizen" during extraordinary times, as well as the life of a neighborhood on a small street in central Paris. It explores the real, day-to-day experience of a revolution: not only the thrill, the joy, and the enthusiasm, but also the uncertainty, the confusion, the anxiety, and the disappointments. While Colson reported on major events such as the storming of the Bastille and the King's flight to Varennes, his correspondence underscores the extent to which the great majority of Parisians--and no doubt of the French population more generally--in no way anticipated the Revolution; the incessant circulation and power of rumors of impending disasters in Paris, not just in the summer of 1789 but continually from the autumn of 1789 throughout the Revolutionary decade; and how this affected popular psychology and behavior. In doing so, this account demonstrates how a Parisian and his neighbors were radicalized over the course of the Revolution. An evocative account of Colson's time and place, The Glory and the Sorrow is a compelling microhistory of Revolutionary France.
About the Author
Timothy Tackett is Professor of History Emeritus at the University of California, Irvine. He is the author of many books, including The Coming of the Terror in the French Revolution; When the King Took Flight; Becoming a Revolutionary: The Deputies of the French National Assembly and the Origins of a Revolutionary Culture; and Religion, Revolution, and Regional Culture in Eighteenth-Century France.
Reviews
This fine book emphasises and dramatizes complexity and contingency in the lives of the capital and its residents. It reminds us how such quotidian topics as cnanine leashes, tenants leases, and urban gossip can open windows into another place and time. * Jeffrey Merrick, New Perspectives on the Eighteenth Century *
A fascinating and tantalizing volume...that can be read with pleasure and recognition...by any scholar of the late Eighteenth century and its turbulent social and political histories. * David Andress, French History *
In 1920, the Soviet Union became the first country in the world to legalize abortion on demand. But in 1936, the Soviet leadership criminalized abortion: the collectivization of the early 1930s was followed by famine that took the lives of millions of people, and the government grew eager to recover the population. Drawing on an amazing wealth of archival material, Nakachi traces the dynamic of Soviet reproductive policies that were invariably guided by pronatalist goals but almost always had damaging consequences. * Foreign Affairs *
The Glory and the Sorrow is a stunning account that integrates a lifetime of research, knowledge, and deep understanding of one's historical actors. It wrestles with enduring questions regarding the local nature of popular activism and the political radicalization of most Parisians. It is a masterclass in animating history as experience, and it will be a gift for generations of scholars and students to come. * Katie Jarvis, H-France Forum *
There are many reasons why Tim Tackett's contribution to our knowledge of the French Revolution commands such attention, but...one aspect in particular...[is its] place...in scholarship on emotions in the Revolution....While The Glory and the Sorrow centres on the life of one man, our understanding of his experience of the Revolution is couched very much in terms of his profound and shifting emotions-from the dizzying heights of 1789...to the 'sorrow' of 1794, as the intense expectations of the early years foundered against the crashing impact of war, betrayal and fear. Tim's unfolding of the events of the Revolution through the emotional registers of one man, offer us, as readers in the twenty-first century a way into understanding what the Revolution meant for the generation that lived through it....We must be grateful that...Colson's letters remain to us as a window on a tumultuous time in world history. * Marisa Linton, H-France Forum *
Evocative and engaging.... Colson's own experience reveals the state of tension that existed throughout the revolutionary years, between inspiration and hope for a better future on the one hand, and anxiety, desperation and sheer terror on the other. This was not helped by the swirl of rumour and speculation that enveloped the political conversations among Colson's neighbours and friends. Yet it is equally clear that Colson worked hard to disentangle reliable from misleading and downright false information. This may have been because as a lawyer he was especially well-equipped to examine the evidence critically...but it is none the less a reminder to historians that just because a rumour was recorded, it did not mean that everyone credulously believed it. It also holds up a mirror to our own age, enveloped as it is in fake news, misinformation and gossip, no less than was Colson's world. * Michael Rapport, H-France Forum *
In The Glory and the Sorrow, Tackett's lively depiction of the initial years of the Revolution challenges us all to match the vivacity and rigor of his analysis and apply them to the entire Revolutionary era....Tackett has painted a detailed portrait of how a small-time, single lawyer from a small, frontier town lived quietly in Paris until the shocks of 1789 transformed his world....By implication and example, it makes a number of important arguments about the causes and consequences of Revolutionary political transformation. * Jeff Horn, H-France Forum *
On one level The Glory and the Sorrow can be read as a beautifully written biography, resurrecting a life that had been lost to history. But it is so much more than that, offering a compelling insight into both revolutionary dynamics and popular emotions in a city in crisis. * ALAN FORREST, University of York, FAMILY & COMMUNITY HISTORY *
Adrien-Joseph Colson was the Mr Ordinary of ancien regime France....But 1789 also effected a radical change on Mr Ordinary Colson, a startling political awakening....Historians of the Revolution will warmly welcome this fine microhistorical biography. It shows Revolutionary radicalization at work on an utterly unremarkable figure who, in the Revolution, along with his neighbourhood, discovered a new set of values and a new political identity within a wider national fraternity. * Colin Jones, Times Literary Supplement *
Drawing on an extraordinarily riche cache of letters, this biography of an ordinary eighteenth-century Parisian gives a marvelously vivid sense of what it was like to live through the last years of France's Old Regime and to participate, at ground level, in the French Revolution. Timothy Tackett has drawn on his unparalleled expertise in the period to produce a biography that is also an illumination-and one that college students in particular will appreciate. * David A. Bell, author of Men on Horseback: The Power of Charisma in the Age of Revolution *
This rich and evocative microhistory brings the late Old Regime and French Revolution alive through the experiences of one small-time Parisian lawyer. Adrien-Joseph Colson turns out to be a likeable and very human figure. As Timothy Tackett explores his reflections and quandaries, The Glory and the Sorrow makes for compelling reading. Once again, Tackett analyzes revolutionary dynamics with insight and vision. * Suzanne Desan, author of The Family on Trial in Revolutionary France *
Adrien Colson's letters reveal how utterly unexpected the French Revolution was for all who lived through it and how everyday citizens of Paris managed to ride the successive waves of optimism, excitement, uncertainty, and fear. Beautifully contextualized by one of the leading historians of the French Revolution, this book makes you feel like a witness to history. Unless you know how to travel through time, you can't get much closer to the events of the French Revolution than this. * Paul Friedland, Cornell University *
There is no better way to experience the hopes, anxieties, and terrors churned out by the French Revolution than this very personal account of an ordinary man in Paris and no better guide to making sense of that experience than Tim Tackett. He has that rare talent for finding archival gems and then gracefully revealing their significance. The reader can't help but feel what Adrien Colson feels as he encounters the excitement, mysteries, and disappointments of revolutionary Paris. * Lynn Hunt, author of History: Why It Matters *
Adrien Colson was a Parisian lawyer who lived through the waning ancien regime and the most turbulent years of the French Revolution. He would have disappeared from history were it not for the 1,000 letters he sent to a friend in central France. In them he gave eyewitness testimony of the revolution as it caught flame in ways neither he nor his neighbour...could have predicted. Timothy Tackett deftly uses the correspondence to create a vivid picture of Colson and his thrilling, terrifying times: his book stands in the tradition of Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie's Montaillou. Colson is revealed as representative of the masses - a man caught up in events, in thrall to rumour and the bewildering speed of events.. * Michael Prodger, New Statesman *
Awards
Winner of Shortlisted, French Heritage Society Book Award.
Book Information
ISBN 9780197557389
Author Timothy Tackett
Format Hardback
Page Count 232
Imprint Oxford University Press Inc
Publisher Oxford University Press Inc
Weight(grams) 370g
Dimensions(mm) 217mm * 147mm * 21mm
About the Author
Timothy Tackett is Professor of History Emeritus at the University of California, Irvine. He is the author of many books, including The Coming of the Terror in the French Revolution; When the King Took Flight; Becoming a Revolutionary: The Deputies of the French National Assembly and the Origins of a Revolutionary Culture; and Religion, Revolution, and Regional Culture in Eighteenth-Century France.
Reviews
This fine book emphasises and dramatizes complexity and contingency in the lives of the capital and its residents. It reminds us how such quotidian topics as cnanine leashes, tenants leases, and urban gossip can open windows into another place and time. * Jeffrey Merrick, New Perspectives on the Eighteenth Century *
A fascinating and tantalizing volume...that can be read with pleasure and recognition...by any scholar of the late Eighteenth century and its turbulent social and political histories. * David Andress, French History *
In 1920, the Soviet Union became the first country in the world to legalize abortion on demand. But in 1936, the Soviet leadership criminalized abortion: the collectivization of the early 1930s was followed by famine that took the lives of millions of people, and the government grew eager to recover the population. Drawing on an amazing wealth of archival material, Nakachi traces the dynamic of Soviet reproductive policies that were invariably guided by pronatalist goals but almost always had damaging consequences. * Foreign Affairs *
The Glory and the Sorrow is a stunning account that integrates a lifetime of research, knowledge, and deep understanding of one's historical actors. It wrestles with enduring questions regarding the local nature of popular activism and the political radicalization of most Parisians. It is a masterclass in animating history as experience, and it will be a gift for generations of scholars and students to come. * Katie Jarvis, H-France Forum *
There are many reasons why Tim Tackett's contribution to our knowledge of the French Revolution commands such attention, but...one aspect in particular...[is its] place...in scholarship on emotions in the Revolution....While The Glory and the Sorrow centres on the life of one man, our understanding of his experience of the Revolution is couched very much in terms of his profound and shifting emotions-from the dizzying heights of 1789...to the 'sorrow' of 1794, as the intense expectations of the early years foundered against the crashing impact of war, betrayal and fear. Tim's unfolding of the events of the Revolution through the emotional registers of one man, offer us, as readers in the twenty-first century a way into understanding what the Revolution meant for the generation that lived through it....We must be grateful that...Colson's letters remain to us as a window on a tumultuous time in world history. * Marisa Linton, H-France Forum *
Evocative and engaging.... Colson's own experience reveals the state of tension that existed throughout the revolutionary years, between inspiration and hope for a better future on the one hand, and anxiety, desperation and sheer terror on the other. This was not helped by the swirl of rumour and speculation that enveloped the political conversations among Colson's neighbours and friends. Yet it is equally clear that Colson worked hard to disentangle reliable from misleading and downright false information. This may have been because as a lawyer he was especially well-equipped to examine the evidence critically...but it is none the less a reminder to historians that just because a rumour was recorded, it did not mean that everyone credulously believed it. It also holds up a mirror to our own age, enveloped as it is in fake news, misinformation and gossip, no less than was Colson's world. * Michael Rapport, H-France Forum *
In The Glory and the Sorrow, Tackett's lively depiction of the initial years of the Revolution challenges us all to match the vivacity and rigor of his analysis and apply them to the entire Revolutionary era....Tackett has painted a detailed portrait of how a small-time, single lawyer from a small, frontier town lived quietly in Paris until the shocks of 1789 transformed his world....By implication and example, it makes a number of important arguments about the causes and consequences of Revolutionary political transformation. * Jeff Horn, H-France Forum *
On one level The Glory and the Sorrow can be read as a beautifully written biography, resurrecting a life that had been lost to history. But it is so much more than that, offering a compelling insight into both revolutionary dynamics and popular emotions in a city in crisis. * ALAN FORREST, University of York, FAMILY & COMMUNITY HISTORY *
Adrien-Joseph Colson was the Mr Ordinary of ancien regime France....But 1789 also effected a radical change on Mr Ordinary Colson, a startling political awakening....Historians of the Revolution will warmly welcome this fine microhistorical biography. It shows Revolutionary radicalization at work on an utterly unremarkable figure who, in the Revolution, along with his neighbourhood, discovered a new set of values and a new political identity within a wider national fraternity. * Colin Jones, Times Literary Supplement *
Drawing on an extraordinarily riche cache of letters, this biography of an ordinary eighteenth-century Parisian gives a marvelously vivid sense of what it was like to live through the last years of France's Old Regime and to participate, at ground level, in the French Revolution. Timothy Tackett has drawn on his unparalleled expertise in the period to produce a biography that is also an illumination-and one that college students in particular will appreciate. * David A. Bell, author of Men on Horseback: The Power of Charisma in the Age of Revolution *
This rich and evocative microhistory brings the late Old Regime and French Revolution alive through the experiences of one small-time Parisian lawyer. Adrien-Joseph Colson turns out to be a likeable and very human figure. As Timothy Tackett explores his reflections and quandaries, The Glory and the Sorrow makes for compelling reading. Once again, Tackett analyzes revolutionary dynamics with insight and vision. * Suzanne Desan, author of The Family on Trial in Revolutionary France *
Adrien Colson's letters reveal how utterly unexpected the French Revolution was for all who lived through it and how everyday citizens of Paris managed to ride the successive waves of optimism, excitement, uncertainty, and fear. Beautifully contextualized by one of the leading historians of the French Revolution, this book makes you feel like a witness to history. Unless you know how to travel through time, you can't get much closer to the events of the French Revolution than this. * Paul Friedland, Cornell University *
There is no better way to experience the hopes, anxieties, and terrors churned out by the French Revolution than this very personal account of an ordinary man in Paris and no better guide to making sense of that experience than Tim Tackett. He has that rare talent for finding archival gems and then gracefully revealing their significance. The reader can't help but feel what Adrien Colson feels as he encounters the excitement, mysteries, and disappointments of revolutionary Paris. * Lynn Hunt, author of History: Why It Matters *
Adrien Colson was a Parisian lawyer who lived through the waning ancien regime and the most turbulent years of the French Revolution. He would have disappeared from history were it not for the 1,000 letters he sent to a friend in central France. In them he gave eyewitness testimony of the revolution as it caught flame in ways neither he nor his neighbour...could have predicted. Timothy Tackett deftly uses the correspondence to create a vivid picture of Colson and his thrilling, terrifying times: his book stands in the tradition of Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie's Montaillou. Colson is revealed as representative of the masses - a man caught up in events, in thrall to rumour and the bewildering speed of events.. * Michael Prodger, New Statesman *
Awards
Winner of Shortlisted, French Heritage Society Book Award.
Book Information
ISBN 9780197557389
Author Timothy Tackett
Format Hardback
Page Count 232
Imprint Oxford University Press Inc
Publisher Oxford University Press Inc
Weight(grams) 370g
Dimensions(mm) 217mm * 147mm * 21mm
