France Biography

Hardcover. New Haven CT, Yale University Press, 1st, 1997, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 354 pages, b&w illustrations. An illustrated study brings to life the atmosphere and personalities of pre-revolutionary Paris, traces their influence on the American envoy, and recounts his participation in the life of the city and its intrigues at court. Clean copy.

Hardcover. University AL, University of Alabama Press, 1st, 1981, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, red cloth covers in a lightly worn dust jacket. Here are the passionate memoirs of the French Communard leader, a hero, saint and martyr to the socialists and anarchists battling the injustices of the Third Republic. 202 pages with a bibliography. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Grove Press, 1st US, 2005, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. In 1753, Voltaire -- playwright, poet, philosopher, and one of the most feted figures in Europe -- was forced by Louis XV into exile, where he remained for the last twenty-five years of his life. These years heralded a startling new beginning for this remarkable man. Voltaire carved out a new and vibrant world in his isolation, becoming a successful entrepreneur and writing his masterpiece Candide. In Voltaire in Exile, Ian Davidson re-creates this period in the life of one of the giants of the Enlightenment. By painstakingly translating the rich correspondence between Voltaire and his family, members of the Court at Versailles, and the French intellectual elite, Davidson allows us to discover Voltaire the artist, the campaigner, the aesthete, the lover, the humorist. The result is a wonderfully vivid portrait of this extraordinarily funny, iconoclastic, complex, and, above all, ferociously intelligent individual. Clean copy.