In the 19th century, the reading public expanded to embrace new categories of consumers, especially of cheap fiction. These new lower class and female readers frightened liberals, Catholics and republicans alike. Martyn Lyons focuses on workers, women, and peasants, and the ways in which their reading was constructed as a social and political problem, to analyze the fear of reading in 19th Century France. He presents case-studies of actual readers, to examine their choices and their practices, and to evaluate how far they responded to (or subverted) attempts at cultural domination.
In the 19th century, the reading public expanded to embrace new categories of consumers, especially of cheap fiction. These new lower class and female...
Martyn Lyons re-assesses European history between the fall of Napoleon and the Crimean War. Refusing to characterize the period as a "Restoration." Lyons presents the struggle of the European monarchies for credibility in the wake of conflicts which had shattered the mystique of kingship. Lyons stresses the invented aspects of emerging nationalism, as well as the important process of rebuilding a political culture after 1815, and the democratic Revolutions of 1848.
Martyn Lyons re-assesses European history between the fall of Napoleon and the Crimean War. Refusing to characterize the period as a "Restoration." Ly...
Between about 1830 and the outbreak of the First World War, print culture, reading, and writing transformed cultural life in Western Europe in many significant ways. Book production and consumption increased dramatically, and practices such as letter- and diary-writing were widespread. This study demonstrates the importance of the nineteenth century in French cultural change and illustrates the changing priorities and concerns of l'histoire du livre since the 1970s.
From the 1830s on, book production experienced an industrial revolution which led to the emergence of a mass...
Between about 1830 and the outbreak of the First World War, print culture, reading, and writing transformed cultural life in Western Europe in many...
The Napoleonic period cannot be interpreted as a single historical 'block'. Bonaparte had many different persona: the Jacobin, the Republican, the reformer of the Consulate, the consolidator of the Empire and the 'liberal' of the Hundred Days. The emphasis here will be on Napoleon as the heir and executor of the French Revolution, rather than on his role as the liquidator of revolutionary ideals. Napoleon will be seen as part of the Revolution, preserving its social gains, and consecrating the triumph of the bourgeoisie. The book will steer away from the personal and heroic interpretation of...
The Napoleonic period cannot be interpreted as a single historical 'block'. Bonaparte had many different persona: the Jacobin, the Republican, the ref...
On 9 thermidor Year 2, Robespierre fell; on18 brumaire Year 8, a coup d'etat brought Bonaparte to power. This book demonstrates that the interval between these two momentous events was also of crucial importance. Using the findings of recent research, it presents a balanced appraisal of the thermidorean and directorial regimes to the English student. For Jacobin sympathizers thermidor and the Directory represented the betrayal of the revolutionary idea; for Bonapartist propagandists it represented chaos and corruption, and the darker the Directory could be painted, the more Bonaparte's...
On 9 thermidor Year 2, Robespierre fell; on18 brumaire Year 8, a coup d'etat brought Bonaparte to power. This book demonstrates that the interval betw...
Offering a fresh history centred on the reactions and experiences of ordinary readers and writers, Lyons deals with key turning points that occurred throughout the centuries, such as the invention of the codex, the transition from scribal to print culture, the reading revolution and the industrialisation of the book. Tracing the major historical developments across Europe and North America which revolutionized our relationship with texts, this book provides an engaging and invaluable overview of the history of scribal and print culture.
Offering a fresh history centred on the reactions and experiences of ordinary readers and writers, Lyons deals with key turning points that occurred t...
This book investigates the history of writing as a cultural practice in a variety of contexts and periods. From the inscribed images of `pre-literate' societies, to the democratization of writing in the modern era, access to writing technology and its public and private uses are examined.
This book investigates the history of writing as a cultural practice in a variety of contexts and periods. From the inscribed images of `pre-literate'...
As war and mass emigration across oceans increased the distances between ordinary people in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, many of them, previously barely literate and unaccustomed to writing, began to communicate on paper. This fascinating account explores this surge of ordinary writing, how people met the new challenges of literacy and the importance of scribal culture to the history of individual experience in modern Europe. Focusing on correspondence and other writing genres produced by French and Italian soldiers in the trenches in the First World War, as well as...
As war and mass emigration across oceans increased the distances between ordinary people in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, many of...
This original study examines different incarnations of the Pyrenees, beginning with the assumptions of 18th-century geologists, who treated the mountains like a laboratory, and romantic 19th-century tourists and habitues of the spa resorts, who went in search of the picturesque and the sublime. The book analyses the individual visions of the heroic Pyrenees which in turn fascinated 19th-century mountaineers and the racing cyclists of the early Tour de France. Martyn Lyons also investigates the role of the Pyrenees during the Second World War as an escape route from Nazi-occupied...
This original study examines different incarnations of the Pyrenees, beginning with the assumptions of 18th-century geologists, who treated the mou...
