Every year no fewer than 2,000 items are published on the French
Revolution. Anyone approaching the subject has immediately to confront
the difficulty of choosing what to read. This is exacerbated by the
shifting contours of the subject itself. Traditional political and
diplomatic history has faded under the pressure from social and economic
historians, but now they are challenged, in turn, by the rapid growth
of intellectual, cultural and gendered history.

The purpose
of this Reader is not to impose order where there is none but, rather,
to capture the range of activities in which historians are engaged.
Constructed according to a broadly ‘social’ and ‘political’ perspective,
it tries to identify those books and articles that may come to be seen
as key contributions to the subject. There are five thematic sections:
Interpretations and Debates; Socio-Cultural Approaches; Gender in the
Public Sphere; Revolutionary Politics; The Crowd, Terror and
Counter-Terror.