
Surviving Revolution
Bourgeois Lives and Letters
Denise Z. Davidson(Author)
Cornell University Press
Published on 15. October 2025
Book
Paperback/Softback
324 pages
978-1-5017-8488-0 (ISBN)
Description
Surviving Revolution explores how two wealthy and well-connected families with roots in Lyon responded to the French Revolution and the resulting transformations. In building a new political system based on liberty, equality, and fraternity, the French Revolution encouraged both individuals and families to recognize their power to shape the world through political action, rethink their strategies in negotiating intimate relations and family life, and assess both terrifying new risks and enticing opportunities for advancement.
Denise Z. Davidson traces two families' trajectories and weaves together the strategies they employed to survive and hopefully thrive in the decades that followed the Revolution. Their private correspondence shows that affect and interest, intimacy and property, are mutually constitutive, and cannot be "thought" separately. Her analysis reveals what it meant to be bourgeois, how gender played a role in the formation of class identities, and how family and emotional life overlapped with other arenas. These social and cultural themes are woven into the narrative through the stories told in the families' letters.
By viewing dramatic historical events through the eyes of people who lived through them, Surviving Revolution illuminates how the practices of everyday life shaped emerging notions of bourgeois identity.
Denise Z. Davidson traces two families' trajectories and weaves together the strategies they employed to survive and hopefully thrive in the decades that followed the Revolution. Their private correspondence shows that affect and interest, intimacy and property, are mutually constitutive, and cannot be "thought" separately. Her analysis reveals what it meant to be bourgeois, how gender played a role in the formation of class identities, and how family and emotional life overlapped with other arenas. These social and cultural themes are woven into the narrative through the stories told in the families' letters.
By viewing dramatic historical events through the eyes of people who lived through them, Surviving Revolution illuminates how the practices of everyday life shaped emerging notions of bourgeois identity.
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Ithaca
United States
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Illustrations
9 b&w halftones, 3 charts - 9 Halftones, black and white - 3 Charts
Dimensions
Height: 151 mm
Width: 228 mm
Thickness: 22 mm
Weight
490 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-5017-8488-0 (9781501784880)
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Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions

E-Book
10/2025
Cornell University Press
€0.00
Available for download
Person
Denise Z. Davidson is Professor of History and Director of the Humanities Research Center at Georgia State University. She is the author of France After Revolution and coauthor of Le roman conjugal.