REVIEWS 535

aux thématiques floues, séparant des contributions qui se répondent pourtant. On aurait
pu, par exemple, créer des liens entre les réflexions d’Henri Rossi, Anne Coudreuse et
Vanda Anastácio, qui font ressortir l’importance de la postérité dans l’écriture de soi; ou
entre celles de Philippe Lejeune, Souad Bouhouch et Suzan van Dijk, qui mettent en évi-
dence que pour ces femmes, le temps de l’écriture est celui de la valorisation de soi.
Néanmoins, l’appareil critique est aussi précis que peut l’être celui d’un ouvrage collectif.
Les notes de bas de page sont propres à chaque auteur. Une bibliographie générale
reprenant les sources envisagées et les études liées est accompagnée d’un index des
noms propres. De même, saluons l’ouverture de ce collectif à la transdisciplinarité, abso-
lument nécessaire pour appréhender les formes et pratiques de l’écriture personnelle.
Enfin, un autre grand intérêt du livre consiste en sa dimension européenne. L’on ne peut
que souhaiter un développement de ces études croisant les méthodes et ouvertes aux cas

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moins renommés, mais sans doute plus représentatifs de la réalité de l’écriture person-
nelle féminine au dix-huitième siècle.

MATHILDE CHOLLET
doi:10.1093/fs/knv162 UNIVERSITÉ DU MAINE

Figures publiques: l’invention de la célébrité, 1750 – 1850. Par ANTOINE LILTI . Paris: Fayard,
2014. 430 pp.
Celebrity as an object of academic study has steadily been gaining currency in recent
years. It remains, though, an ambiguous term: at one extreme, it is employed to denote a
very modern state, specifically linked to audio-visual media; while at the other it is con-
sidered to encompass the whole spectrum of fame, from the glory of emperors, to the
fascination of the beautiful starlet, to the charisma of a religious cult. Antoine Lilti sets
out to navigate a course between these two points, considered respectively as too reduc-
tive or too broad. Instead, he investigates the birth and development of a very precise
phenomenon: namely, a widespread interest in the private lives of public figures, which
resulted from the elision between public and private worlds that took place from the mid
eighteenth century. In order to better define this form of fame, Lilti usefully makes brief
reference to associated contemporary notions, including reputation (related to honour),
glory (generally posthumous), and popularity (most often associated with politics).
Celebrity, in his definition, refers to the process by which the colleagues, admirers, or
neighbours among whom a reputation might exist are replaced by a public that has no
prior association with the famous individual. The illusion of intimacy is acquired
through the close attention paid to the mundane, private details of the celebrity’s life:
curiosity is the defining feature of this one-way relationship. Lilti argues that this served
the further purpose of creating communities of interest that defined themselves by
whom they admired, quite distinct from the rational public sphere of earlier accounts.
The book proceeds through a series of case studies, ranging from Voltaire, Rousseau,
Garrick, and Mozart through Mirabeau, Marie-Antoinette and Franklin, to Byron and
Napoleon. The central consequence of examining these varied figures is to underline
what, for Lilti, is one of the key features of his version of celebrity: it is an egalitarian
process, to which the actor or the writer is just as susceptible as the emperor or polit-
ician. But the different figures also allow for discussion of different facets of this devel-
oping trend: the media for creating celebrity, the drawbacks of being a public figure, the
relationship between man and work, and celebrity as it is linked to power. Although Lilti
does describe how the phenomenon he studies relates to modern celebrity culture, this is
not, I think, his only concern. Rather, he is interested in a particular moment; a combin-
ation of sociopolitical circumstances that resulted in the development of a very specific
form of fame. There are many pathways he is forced to leave untrodden, not least the
536 REVIEWS

complex relationship between his version of celebrity and the posthumous glory to which
he only gestures. It is inevitable, too, that those wedded to the idea of a much longer
history of celebrity will dispute the historical specificity of this account. However, Lilti
contends that his aim is to make celebrity a useable tool for researchers, and in this regard
this meticulously researched and engagingly written account is immensely valuable.

JESSICA GOODMAN
doi:10.1093/fs/knv159 CLARE COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE

Experiencing the French Revolution. Edited by DAVID ANDRESS. (SVEC 2013:05.) Oxford:

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Voltaire Foundation, 2013. viii + 332 pp., ill.
This rich and diverse collection of essays, by a healthy amalgame of established and
up-and-coming scholars, demonstrates how in recent years research on the French
Revolution has fanned out across a wide range of methodologies, approaches, and sub-
jects. The contributions are, however, anchored by David Andress’s thought-provoking
Introduction: they are part of a longer-standing ‘quest to understand revolutionary ex-
perience without resorting to restrictive models or paradigms’ (p. 9). In the wake of the
revisionist assault on the Marxist tradition, many historians took the linguistic turn, but
this did not open up as many explanatory vistas as some, perhaps, expected. The focus
on the human experience is a way out of the impasse, and this in turn encourages a rich
variety of approaches that are reflected in this edited volume. Some certainly push the
evidence to its limits — a point Andress reflects upon as he probes the possibilities of
neuroscience in considering emotional responses in the past. It also shows that there
may have been as many ways of experiencing the French Revolution as there were indivi-
duals, which makes it hard, if not impossible to come up with a paradigm of revolution.
If Marxist or other metanarratives claim to rest upon a deeper, scientific truth, in the
current plurality of approaches the very meaning and historical significance of revolution
can be debated. The collection certainly lives up to its purpose. There are chapters on
the ways in which leading figures experienced, interpreted, and reinterpreted the revolu-
tion for their own purposes: Mette Harder tracks the career of that slippery survivor,
Tallien; Peter McPhee offers insights on Robespierre’s shifting attitudes towards vio-
lence; and J. Ward Regan discusses Paine. Of necessity, the question of trauma also
emerges in its various psychological, cultural, and political guises, as in Ian Germani’s
essay on military justice; Marisa Linton’s exploration of the ‘stuff of nightmares’ — the
fears of the Jacobin leadership. Ronen Steinberg considers how, in the very absence of
the concept of trauma, the survivors of the Terror processed what they had undergone.
And, since revolutionary political culture was an inescapable part of the revolutionary ex-
perience, Simon Burrows delves into the international network of the banned book
trade, Charles Walton discusses the meanings of patriotic giving, and Jonathan Smyth
gauges the public response to the Fête de l’Être Suprême by examining the correspond-
ence between the provinces and the organizing committee in Paris. When Alex
Fairfax-Cholmeley shows how victims of the Terror sometimes fought their corner in
print, one is reminded of recent work on Stalin’s terror in the USSR, whereby potential
victims could use the regime’s own language in their own defence. Finally, the international
impact is explored in two richly documented pieces: one by Brecht Deseure on Belgium,
which shows how the French conquerors tried to ensure continuity by responding to local
sensitivities; the other, by Ffion Jones, (refreshingly) on Welsh responses in 1797, the year
of the landings on the Pembrokeshire coast. Andress describes the richness of this