Customer Reviews

The French Revolution

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

No-one has ever written history like this, before or since. Turn to any page and you will find that Carlyle writes history like a novelist. Indeed, considering that he wrote in the middle of the nineteenth century, before the medium was born, his history of the French Revolution reads like the script for a film. The text fizzes and bangs with remarkable phrases, but it also used the present tense to conjure up images. There is no point in reading Carlyle for an up to date view of the Revolution; but as entertainment, the book beats everything else.

Stephen Cooper

An all time great book. A big favorite of Mark Twain:

"When I finished Carlyle's French Revolution in 1871, I was a Girondin; every time I have read it since, I have read it differently - being influenced and changed, little by little, by life and environment.. and now I lay the book down once more, and recognize that I am a Sansculotte! - And not a pale, characterless Sansculotte, but a Marat."

Dickens also was supposed to have read this obsessively. I can't tell at this point if I am a Mark Marat or a Dickens Defarge.

Regardless, it is the narrative viewpoint, style and intelligence that made this book a sensation from what I can determine. I think this style has been completely lost. Maybe not but it is difficult to think of any good major examples from the current media.

I think there is useful information in this work. It's a very difficult read. If you need to read everything about the French Revolution, save this till last. If you know almost everything when you start,this might make more sense. I knew a little and was often confused by this book.

John Beyerlein

Liz & Dick