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  • © 2017

Popular Rumour in Revolutionary Paris, 1792-1794

Palgrave Macmillan

Authors:

  • Examines how rumour shaped perceptions of the French Revolution
  • Analyses the role of rumour in community life, through a range of police reports and archival source
  • Explores how these narratives enabled communities to interpret current events through familiar language and imagery
  • Includes supplementary material: sn.pub/extras
  • Includes supplementary material: sn.pub/extras

Part of the book series: War, Culture and Society, 1750–1850 (WCS)

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Table of contents (8 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-xii
  2. Introduction

    • Lindsay Porter
    Pages 1-35
  3. Rumour, Riots, Feasts and Famines

    • Lindsay Porter
    Pages 105-134
  4. Rumour, Reputation and Identity

    • Lindsay Porter
    Pages 171-203
  5. Rumour, Denunciation and Terror

    • Lindsay Porter
    Pages 205-240
  6. Conclusion

    • Lindsay Porter
    Pages 241-246
  7. Back Matter

    Pages 247-267

About this book

This book examines the impact of rumour during the French Revolution, offering a new approach to understanding the experiences of those who lived through it. Focusing on Paris during the most radical years of the Jacobin republic, it argues that popular rumour helped to shape perceptions of the Revolution and provided communities with a framework with which to interpret an unstable world.


Lindsay Porter explores the role of rumour as a phenomenon in itself, investigating the way in which the informal authority of the ‘word on the street’ was subject to a range of historical and contemporary prejudices. Drawing its conclusions from police reports and other archival sources, this study examines the potential of rumour both to unite and to divide communities, as rumour and hearsay began to play an important role in defining and judging personal commitment to the Revolution and what it meant to be a citizen.


Reviews

“ Its changing content, identify the groups through which it passed, and study the ways that they made sense of it as it ebbed and flowed, crossing paths with other means of communication such as images, graffiti, songs, letters, and all varieties of the printed word.” (Robert Darnton, H-France Forum, Vol. 14 (2), 2019)

“The study of rumor during the French Revolution is a wonderful subject, … . Lindsay Porter is well aware of this work, and one of the virtues of her book is to recognize the ways that revolutionary rumor renewed and built on older themes.” (David Garrioch, H-France Forum, Vol. 14 (2), 2019)


Authors and Affiliations

  • Manchester, United Kingdom

    Lindsay Porter

About the author

Lindsay Porter is the author of Who are the Illuminati? (2005) and Assassination: A Political History (2010), both of which were translated into several languages. She also contributed to Conspiracy Theories in American History: An Encyclopedia (2001). Her current research interests are in popular rumour and public opinion in the eighteenth century.

Bibliographic Information

Buy it now

Buying options

eBook USD 69.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book USD 89.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book USD 119.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Other ways to access