The Life of a Simple Man - Softcover

Guillaumin, Emile

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0874512468 ISBN 13: 9780874512465

Publisher: University Press of New England, 1982

Synopsis

In order to "show the gents of Moulins, of Paris and elsewhere, just what a sharecropper's life is like," Emile Guillaumin, under the guise of fiction, wrote this story of "Tiennon," a French peasant born fifty years before him in 1823. A peasant himself, Guillaumin was unique in that, after a few years of schooling, he continued to work his small farm in central France to the end of his life, reserving nights for study and writing. Guillaumin felt that the French peasant had been misrepresented in contemporary literature--either romanticized as in George Sand or depicted as a dumb victim of the forces of nature as in Zola--and wanted to correct the picture. The result is a moving first-person story that can be read as a fictional account, as well as the best kind of material for historians seeking to understand how nineteenth-century French peasants really lived.

About this title

Review:

A moving and informative fictional autobiography [on 19th-century French peasant life] New York Times Book Review"

Rich and rewarding as a work of fiction, but equally so as a work of history Los Angeles Times Book Review"

"A moving and informative fictional autobiography [on 19th-century French peasant life]"-- "New York Times Book Review"

"Rich and rewarding as a work of fiction, but equally so as a work of history"-- "Los Angeles Times Book Review"

About the Author:

EUGEN WEBER is Professor of History and Dean of the College of Letters and Science at UCLA. He has written many books on France, including Peasants into Frenchmen: The Modernization of Rural France, 1870-1914.

About this edition

• Publisher: University Press of New England
• Publication date: 1982
• ISBN 10: 0874512468
• ISBN 13: 9780874512465
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 231