Overview
Primary sources can be found using a variety of tools including library catalogs (selected primary sources are reproduced in books written by historians), databases, and search engines.The vast majority of the sources compiled here are English-language materials or translations to English from French. This is not an exhaustive list and there may be primary sources reproduced in some of your secondary sources. Also remember that primary sources are not just documents but can also be works of art, clothing, buildings, and other public locations created at a particular time.
Diaries, Letters, Correspondence, Journals, and Memoirs
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Writing the Revolution
by
Writing the Revolution is a microhistory of a middle-class Parisian woman, Rosalie Jullien, whose nearly 1,000 familiar letters have never before been studied. The Jullien name is not new to histories of the French Revolution. Rosalie's son, Marc-Antoine, known in the family as Jules, was closely connected to the Committee of Public Safety during the Reign of Terror. However, despite being the wife and mother of revolutionary elites, Rosalie led a private life. Connected to the Revolution in very personal ways, she was also distanced from the lime light because of her gender and her proclivity for modesty. Her correspondence allows readers to enter her private world and see the intellectual, emotional, and familial life of a revolutionary in all of its complexity. The prevailing thesis in the field holds that the revolutionary elite constructed the New Regime against women, effectively excluding them from the political sphere, although nearly every existing study of women has approached the subject through oblique sources and mostly male voices. Rosalie Jullien's long missives to her husband and son, however, document her relationship to politics as she explained it. Despite never seeking a public role, Rosalie developed a political identity that included a revolutionized understanding of womanhood. Writing the Revolution builds on the innovative scholarship on the history of the family during the Revolution and demonstrates how the family sphere was revolutionized even in cases where the wife maintained a traditional family role.Jullien's correspondence boasts many values as an artifact of the Revolutionary experience, of women's lives, and of epistolary culture. Rosalie demonstrates the individual's experience within the evolving structures of a modernizing state, family, and gender identity. The period covered spans from 1775 to 1810. A portrayal of Rosalie's early married life, and the decade she spent with her husband and children in a small town north of Grenoble, begins the book, and is followed by a chapter on the couple's reading practices and their views toward religion prior to the Revolution. The heart of the research focuses on Rosalie's life and experiences in Revolutionary Paris and her decision, in the aftermath of the Terror, to emphasize private, domestic life over politics.
Call Number: Available OnlineISBN: 9780199931026
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An Appeal to Impartial Posterity by Jeanne Marie Roland de la Platière"Whilst in prison for her liberal views Roland wrote a series of letters and reflections which were published in 2 volumes."
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The Diary and Letters of Gouverneur Morris"Morris was a lawyer and diplomat during the American Revolution and early years of the Republic. He was supporter of a strong, centralised government which would be dominated by those well-born. He served as Minster to France 1792-94 and the diaries he kept of this period are a useful historical record of the time."
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Correspondence on the French Revolution, 1789-1817Note: The Internet Open Archive Library also offers an option to listen to this document
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Letters from Paris, on the causes and consequences of the French revolution by William C. SomervilleNote: The Internet Open Archive Library also offers an option to listen to this document
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Memoirs relating to the French revolutionFull Text via Internet Archive.
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Prison journals during the French revolutionFull Text via Internet Archive
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Onset of the French Revolution, 1789 (Letters from Thomas Jefferson)Via The National Archives
Documents, Writings, and Speeches
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The French Revolution (Hanover Historical Texts)The Hanover Historical Texts Collection makes available digital versions of historical texts for educational use.
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The Reign of TerrorA collection of authentic narratives of the horrors committed by the revolutionary government of France under Marat and Robespierre. Written by eye-witnesses of the scenes. Tr. from the French. Interspersed with biographical notices of prominent characters, and curious anecdotes, illustrative of a period without its parallel in history
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The principal speeches of the statesmen and orators of the French Revolution, 1789-1795 by Henry Morse StephensNote: The Internet Open Archive Library also offers an option to listen to this document
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The Miscellaneous Works by Sir James Mackintosh"This collections contains his philosophical writings on Locke, natural law, Thomas More, and Machiavelli; his historical writings on the Glorious Revolution, his defence of the French Revolution Vindiciae Gallicae; and several of his speeches in the House of Commons."
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A Vindication of the Rights of Men by Mary WollstonecraftOne of the first responses to Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France. Wollstonecraft later lived in France during the Terror and wrote a history of the events she witnessed.
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An Historical and Moral View of the Origin and Progress of the French Revolution and the Effect it Has Produced in Europe by Mary Wollstonecraft"An optimistic and rationalist account of the French Revolution based upon first-hand, eyewitness experiences. It was intended to defend the Revolution against critics like Burke. Wollstonecraft explained the violent excesses of the Revolution as an over-reaction caused by the degraded character of the French people which was in turn the result of the despotism of the old regime."
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An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice"Written in the early years of the French Revolution before the Terror had begun, Godwin provides a devastating critique of unjust government institutions and optimistically proposes that individuals not the state can best provide for their needs. He believed that political change could best be brought about gradually and as a result of free discussion in small communities. This work has inspired many generations of radical thinkers."
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A Colony in Crisis: The Sainte Domingue Grain Shortage of 1789A digital humanities project regarding the colony of Saint-Domingue in 1789. The site is designed to provide translated excerpts of 18th century pamphlets from French to English to increase access to rare documents.
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Contemporary American opinion of the French RevolutionNote: The Internet Open Archive Library also offers an option to listen to this document
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The Spirit of Despotism (1821 ed.) [1795] by Vicesimus KnoxAn edition from 1821. It was written in 1795 when Britain was leading the Coalition of monarchies in a war against the French Revolution, this is Knox’s warning that war against a foreign enemy helps create despotic government at home.
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Source studies on the French revolution by Fred Morrow FlingNote: The Internet Open Archive Library also offers an option to listen to this document