The Forbidden Best-Sellers of Pre-Revolutionary France

by Robert Darnton

Darnton discovered the archive of a publishing firm that smuggled books into France before the revolution

Other books by Robert Darnton

The Revolutionary Temper: Paris, 1748–1789
by Robert Darnton

The Great Cat Massacre and Other Episodes in French Cultural History
by Robert Darnton

Our most recommended books

On Liberty
by John Stuart Mill
Middlemarch
by George Eliot
War and Peace
by Leo Tolstoy
Frankenstein (Book)
by Mary Shelley
Nineteen Eighty-Four
by George Orwell
Dracula
by Bram Stoker

Support Five Books

Five Books interviews are expensive to produce, please support us by donating a small amount.

About

We ask experts to recommend the five best books in their subject and explain their selection in an interview.

This site has an archive of more than one thousand seven hundred interviews, or eight thousand book recommendations. We publish at least two new interviews per week.

Five Books participates in the Amazon Associate program and earns money from qualifying purchases.

Get our newsletter

Book Reviews on...

The Forbidden Best-Sellers of Pre-Revolutionary France

by Robert Darnton

Other books by Robert Darnton

The Revolutionary Temper: Paris, 1748–1789 by Robert Darnton

The Great Cat Massacre and Other Episodes in French Cultural History by Robert Darnton

Our most recommended books

On Liberty by John Stuart Mill

Middlemarch by George Eliot

War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy

Frankenstein (Book) by Mary Shelley

Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell

Dracula by Bram Stoker

About

The Revolutionary Temper: Paris, 1748–1789
by Robert Darnton

The Great Cat Massacre and Other Episodes in French Cultural History
by Robert Darnton

On Liberty
by John Stuart Mill

Middlemarch
by George Eliot

War and Peace
by Leo Tolstoy

Frankenstein (Book)
by Mary Shelley

Nineteen Eighty-Four
by George Orwell

Dracula
by Bram Stoker