The Duchesse d'Elbeuf's Letters to a Friend, 1788-94

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The French Revolution has always occupied a place of choice within general anglophone culture as well as among the historical community. From Thomas Carlyle's The French Revolution (1837), Charles Dickens's A Tale of Two Cities (1859) and the Baroness d'Orczy's Scarlet Pimpernel series (from 1903) through, more recently, to TV, film and other media - such as the controversial 2015 Assassin's Creed video-game - particular interest has focussed on the personal experience of the Revolution by ordinary people. This Project introduces into discussions and debates a character who could have walked straight out of a Dickens or d'Orczy novel: the dowager duchesse d'Elbeuf (1707-94). A completely unknown set of six notebooks in her hand in the form of letters to a friend, discovered by Colin Jones in the Archives Nationales in Paris, provide a running commentary on France's Revolution from late 1788 through to the violent turmoil of the Terror of 1793-94. They are remarkable not only for being written from the perspective of a woman of high aristocratic status articulating overtly Counter-Revolutionary views, but also for having been composed largely at her Parisian home, the Hôtel d'Elbeuf, situated a matter of yards from the authorities running France from the Tuileries Palace complex. Above all, they are of interest as a unique critical commentary from the heart of Revolutionary Paris on the daily development of the Revolution, and especially the Terror, written at a period when politically unorthodox or Counter-Revolutionary views were increasingly being silenced - and when such statements could lead their authors to the guillotine. The project aims to bring this extraordinary document into scholarly discussion of the Revolution and making it widely known among the general public. The first task is to provide a full transcription of the Letters: they will be published in entirety in French as a scholarly edition and select passages will also made available in English translation on an open-access online site. This effort will combine an investigation of the circumstances in which the Letters were composed, and how the manuscripts survived, with reconstructing the author's biography, and a study of the authorial voice and commentary which emerges from the text. The Project team will then seek to diffuse knowledge of the Letters as broadly as possible so as to stimulate interest in their content and what they reveal about the French Revolution. The scholarly community will be targeted via seminars, lectures, conference talks and articles in peer-reviewed journals (besides making the Letters readily available for the first time). The team will also hope to stimulate interdisciplinary reflection on the Letters and on the Revolution more generally, notably by an international conference on the theme, 'Historical Witnessing', targeted at a literary as well as a historical audience. In addition, the Project will seek to stimulate interest in and discussion of the French Revolution among the general public and in particular among trainee historians, undergraduates and A-Level students. This will be achieved notably through an exhibition to be co-curated with the Art Museum at University College London; by making a selection of letters in English translation available on the Project website; by an H-France 'Webinar' aimed at graduate students; and by a conference aimed at A-Level teachers and students. The Blog will facilitate conversations spanning all audiences and provide a hub for promoting Project outputs. Articles placed in history trade journals such as History Today as a starting point for developing wider impact through the media. Finally, the project will enhance the development of two scholars of the French Revolution - the Co-Investigator and the Postdoctoral Research Assistant attached to the project - both at an early stage in their careers.