French Revolution Studies

Academic works about the French Revolution! Not focused on primary sources or the Napoleonic era, just the Revolution- let’s goooo

See my pinned comment for MANY more that aren’t on PB

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created by StJust

last updated May, 2026

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Please note that I haven’t read 100% of the books here, but most of them! This list offers a wide array of views on the Revolution, some of which IMO are more valid than others. But it’s interesting to see how people have interpreted it over the years.

There are so many books I wanted to put on here that aren’t on PB!!

  • The French Revolution by J.F. Bosher
  • Paris, the Provinces and the French Revolution by Alan Forrest
  • The French Revolution, from its origins to 1793 by Georges Lefebvre (this whole series is good)
  • The French Revolution 1770-1814 by François Furet
  • The Thermidorean Regime and the Directory 1794-1799 by Denis Woronoff
  • Parlez-vous sans-culotte ? by Michel Biard (I don’t think this has been published in English)
  • The Course of the French Revolution by Pierre Goubert
  • A Rhetoric of Bourgeois Revolution by William H. Sewell
  • What is the Third Estate by the Abbé Sieyes
  • Festivals and the French Revolution by Mona Ozouf
  • The French Revolution: A Political History by John Hardman
  • Surviving Revolution: Bourgeois Lives and Letters by Denise Z. Davidson
  • The French Revolution : Faith, Desire and Politics by Noah Shusterman
  • The First Emancipation: The Forgotten History of Abolition in Revolutionary France by Jeremy Popkin
  • Rebel Daughters: Women and the French Revolution by Sara Melzer and Leslie Rabine
  • Marx and the French Revolution by François Furet
  • A Socialist History of the French Revolution by Jean Jaurès
  • Jean-Paul Marat: Prophet of Terror by Keith Michael Baker

Also the book Interpreting the French Revolution is by François Furet, I have no clue who this listed author is 😂😂

Extra credit that is a side topic to the French Revolution but super worth reading: The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L’Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution by C.L.R. James

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