This reader has been prepared specially for use in the multidisciplinary course LibertŽ: France's Impact on the Nineteenth Century led by Brian Counihan at Community High School in Roanoke, Virginia. The course is intended to present an introduction to the dramatic and hotly-contested progress of French society as it entered, and helped to create, the modern age. I have brought together artifacts and texts from the domains of politics, literature, history, philosophy, and art that attempt to indicate not only the dominant trends in French society, but also those underground counter-currents which have always existed within and against it.
This volume is the first of four; it covers the period from the French Revolution up to the eve of the July Revolution of 1830. Vol. 2 will pick up there and carry us to the eve of the Revolution of 1848; Vol. 3 to the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War; and the final volume will bring us from the Commune to centuryÕs end.