Private Lives and Public Affairs - (Studies on the History of Society and Culture) by Sarah Maza (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

From 1770 to 1789 a succession of highly publicized cases riveted the attention of the French public. Maza argues that the reporting of these private scandals had a decisive effect on the way in which the French public came to understand public issues in the years before the Revolution.

From the Back Cover

This is a book about stories, about the public impact of tales of private life. The stories in question are those of the parties to a series of highly publicized court cases, or causes celebers, which gripped the attention of the French-and especially the Parisian-reading public in the two decades preceding the Revolution of 1789.

Review Quotes

"A sophisticated analysis of the development of prerevolutionary political culture based on an examination of nontraditional sources. . . . This is an important work for revolutionary historians."--"Choice

About the Author

Sarah Maza is Professor of History at Northwestern University and the author of Servants and Masters in Eighteenth-Century France: The Uses of Loyalty (1983).