Advert Description
Are you interested in this item? This item is up for auction at Catawiki. Please click on "respond to advert" (orange button) to get redirected to the Catawiki website. Catawiki’s goal is to make special objects universally available. Our weekly auctions feature thousands of unusual, rare, and exceptional objects you won’t find in just any store. Good complete copy of the 12 volumes, including the rare Analytical Table which is often missing (here in the first edition) of the monumental History of France by Hippolyte Taine (1828-1893): the major work of the author.
Deeply shaken by the defeat of 1870 as well as by the insurrection (and its violent repression) of the Commune of Paris, Taine devoted himself, from 1870, fully to his History of the origins of contemporary France (1875-1893 ), until his death and which received a very significant impact.
Indeed, in an original way, because it is placed in a long perspective, this study focuses on the causes of the French Revolution. In particular, he denounced the artificiality of French political constructions (the excessively abstract and rational spirit of a Robespierre, for example) which violently contradicted the natural and slow growth of the institutions of a State.
Taine gives history the status of an exact science. He himself applied his program in 1875 in The Origins of Contemporary France: “We will allow a historian to act as a naturalist; I was in front of my subject as in front of the metamorphosis of an insect…”
AUTHOR: Hippolyte Taine
TITLE: History of the origins of contemporary France.
The old regime (2 volumes) - The revolution (6 volumes) - The modern regime (2 volumes) + Analytical table
PUBLISHER: Paris, Hachette 1900-1901 (23rd ed) 12 volumes in 11 volumes (volume 11 and t 12 bound together). About 350pp/vol.
Later bindings in ocher half-shagreen, smooth spine decorated with gilt letters.
Bindings in very good condition, the leather has some light rubbing. Fresh interior, preserved covers (without the backs), some scattered foxing.
Dampness in the foot margin of volumes 1.2.3.4.7.10.11 &12 Important in volumes 8 & 9
Subject: TAINE History of the origins of contemporary France. Revolution + Table 1900 12/12 67509063
