Writers and Revolution Intellectuals and the French Revolution of 1848

The revolution of 1848 has been described as the revolution of the intellectuals. In France, the revolution galvanised the energies of major romantic writers and intellectuals. This book follows nine writers through the revolution of 1848 and its aftermath: Alphonse de Lamartine, George Sand, Marie d'Agoult, Victor Hugo, Alexis de Tocqueville, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Alexander Herzen, Karl Marx, and Gustave Flaubert. Conveying a sense of the experience of 1848 as these writers lived it, this fresh and engaging study captures the sense of possibility at a time when it was not yet clear that the Second French Republic had no future. By looking closely at key texts in which each writer attempted to understand, judge, criticise, or intervene in the revolution, Jonathan Beecher shows how each endeavoured to answer the question posed explicitly by Tocqueville: Why, within the space of two generations, did democratic revolutions twice culminate in the dictatorship of a Napoleon?

1. Prologue; 2. Lamartine, the Girondins and 1848; 3. George Sand: 'The People' Found and Lost; 4. Marie d'Agoult: A Liberal Republican; 5. Victor Hugo: The Republic as a Learning Experience; 6. Tocqueville: 'A Vile Tragedy Performed by Provincial Actors'; 7. Proudhon: 'A Revolution Without An Idea'; 8. Alexander Herzen: A Tragedy Both Collective and Personal; 9. Marx: The Meaning of a Farce; 10. Flaubert: Lost Hopes and Empty Words; 11: Aftermath, Themes and Conclusion.

Jonathan Beecher is Professor Emeritus of History at the University of California at Santa Cruz. A European intellectual historian, with a special interest in France and Russia, his previous publications include Charles Fourier: The Visionary and His World (1986) and Victor Considerant and the Rise and Fall of French Romantic Socialism (2001). His works have been translated into French, Italian and Japanese.