Location
Age
Area of FocusAbout Robert's Work
Robert Darnton studies the social and cultural history of early-modern Europe, mainly France.
Most of his work represents an attempt to develop a social history of ideas—to understand the way ideas operate within the social order, rather than in formal thought. His writings have brought about a historical reassessment of the role of literary culture in the eighteenth century. Darnton’s books include The Business of Enlightenment: A Publishing History of the Encyclopedie 1775-1800 (1979), The Literary Underground of the Old Regime (1982), The Great Cat Massacre and Other Episodes in French Cultural History (1984), The Kiss of Lamourette: Reflections in Cultural History (1989), Edition et sédition. L’univers de la littérature clandestine au XVIIIe siècle (1991), Berlin Journal, 1989-1990 (1991), Gens de lettres, gens du livre (1992), The Forbidden Best-Sellers of Prerevolutionary France (1995), and The Corpus of Clandestine Literature in France, 1769-1789 (1995).
Biography
Darnton is the Shelby Cullom Davis Professor of European History at Princeton University, where he has taught since 1968. He served as president of the International Society of Eighteenth-Century Studies (1987-91) and is a member of All Souls College, University of Oxford.
Darnton received a B.A. (1960) from Harvard College, and a B. Phil. (1962) and a D. Phil. (1964) from the University of Oxford, where he was a Rhodes Scholar.
Last updated January 1, 2005.
Published on August 1, 1982
