Private Lives and Public Affairs - The Causes Celebres of Prerevolutionary France (Paperback, Revised)

This is a book about stories, about the public impact of tales of private life. The stories in question are those of the parties to a series of highly publicized court cases, or causes celebers, which gripped the attention of the French-and especially the Parisian-reading public in the two decades preceding the Revolution of 1789.