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435 pages. 155 x 100 mm.Number 170 in The Family Library. Damage to foot and head of spine. Signature of early owner on top blank margin of title page. Gilt lettering on spine. Jules Michelet, who went on in life to become a famous French historian, was born in Paris in August 1798 into a family which had Huguenot traditions and where his father was precariously self-employed as a printer. As he grew to manhood Michelet was offered employment in the imperial printing office but his father, who had hopes for his evidently talented son, decided to keep him in school despite the relative poverty of his circumstances. The son fulfilled some of his father's expectations - he progressed from school to higher studies, in history. In 1821 he was appointed as a teacher of history. He married in 1824. Between 1825 and 1827 Michelet produced a number of sketches, chronological tables, etc., of modern history. His Introduction à l'histoire universelle, published in 1831, displayed the peculiar romantic and visionary qualities which make him one the most stimulating of all historians. It also featured his tendency to indulge in historical suggestions which, although associated with solid facts, are not always trustworthy. The Introduction à l'histoire universelle was in fact partly inspired by the anti-rationalist approach of the philosopher Vico who had proclaimed the triumph of the imagination over analysis. The events of 1830 which initiated the "liberal" monarchy of Louis Philippe unmuzzled Michelet as a liberal, anti-clerical and very patriotic historian and writer, and also put him in a better position for study by obtaining for him the position of head of the Historical Section of the National Archives and a deputy-professorship under Guizot in the literary faculty of the Sorbonne. Soon afterwards he began his chief and monumental work Histoire de France (History of France) in which he immersed himself in the narrative and stressed the development of France as a nation. It was in these years of his early thirties that Michelet seems to have begun to drift somewhat away from a previous acceptance of catholicism and royalism and towards more radical views. The completion of the Histoire de France was to involved intermittently sustained efforts over more than thirty years from 1833 but Michelet also produced other many works during these years. Some of the earlier of these other works included Oeuvres choisies de Vico, the Mémoires de Luther écrits par lui-même, and the Origines du droit française. In 1838 he was appointed professor at the Collège de France, where he held the chair of History and Ethics. He published, in 1839, his Histoire romaine. The results of his lectures appeared in the volumes Le Prêtre, la femme, et la famille (1843), and Le Peuple (1846). In his Le Peuple, Michelet describes the spirit and qualities of the French working class. It is widely considered to be his best single volume. On its initial day of publication it sold a thousand copies and was immediately translated into English. It discussed various economic and political transformations as France and Europe shifted from an agrarian to an industrial society and examined the condition of the social classes. According to Michelet, modernization and industrialization were heightening political and ideological conflict. He called for a love of one's country to solve many of France's problems and placed faith in the innate goodness of the masses, seeing "the people" as the source of progress in history. Le Peuple looks to the people to unify France and make her great. Michelet believed they were the true custodians of the spirit of Joan of Arc, and that their revolution had been a revelation of the inherent nobility of humankind. Michelet visualized himself throughout his life as a champion of the people . Seller Inventory # 003742
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