A Field of Honor: Writers, Court Culture, and Public Theater in French Literary Life from Racine to the Revolution

Gregory Brown

March, 2005
Cloth, 387 pages,
ISBN: 978-0-231-12460-7
$53.50 / £31.50

"Brown's book provides a fascinating analysis of the world of dramatic authors during the Old Regime....Effectively challenges aspects of historians'current understanding of the political culture of Old Regime France while providing new interpretations of dramatic writers and their relationship with that culture.... And its overall quality is certainly equal to that of the best historical monographs published in the traditional manner." — American Historical Review

"How giants like Voltaire and Beaumarchais managed to beat the system, turn it to their advantage, and, in the case of Beaumarchais, make the Comédie work more in the interests of the profession. But Brown does not neglect the authors whom the system beat... An exceptional contribution to theater and cultural history." — H France

"An important contribution to studies of cultural politics in the... eighteenth century and is sure to become required reading." — Katherine Astbury, British Journal of Eighteenth-Century Studies

"A strong and revealing appreciation for the tensions and crosscurrents." — American Historical Association

Series

• Gutenberg-e

About the Author

/www.unlv.edu/faculty/gbrown> is an Assistant Professor of History at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. He received a doctorate in European History from Columbia University (1997); he has previously been a post-doctoral research associate at the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University and a fellow at the Reid Hall Institute for Scholars in Paris. In addition to his forthcoming Gutenberg-e book, he is also completing a monograph on Beaumarchais and the Society of Dramatic Authors to be published by Ashgate.

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