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On History: Introduction to World History (1831); Opening Address at the Faculty of Letters, 9 January 1834; Preface to History of France (1869)
Jules Michelet. Translated by Flora Kimmich, Lionel Gossman, and Edward K. Kaplan. Foreword by Lionel Gossman 
Edited by Lionel Gossman, this volume contains three programmatic essays by Michelet. The first two are available here for the first time in English translation. The third, the Preface to the 1869 edition of the Histoire de France, originally published in its first English translation by Edward K. Kaplan in his Michelet’s Poetic Vision (1977), has been revised by the translator for this volume. Curated by leading scholars and translators this volume provides essential reading for anybody interested in modern French and European history.
One of the greatest Romantic historians and immensely popular during his lifetime, Jules Michelet (1798-1874) fell into disfavour among the positivist historians who came after him and who regarded his work with disdain as "literature." In the 1920s and 30s, however, he began to be rediscovered and rehabilitated by the members of the influential Annales school. The objects of Michelet’s interest—living conditions, popular mentalities, laws and the arts, the historian’s relation to the objects of his study, no less than political history—have since come to occupy a central place in modern historical research.
A free online-only supplement contains an essay on Michelet by John Stuart Mill from the Edinburgh Review (January 1844) and several studies of Michelet by Lionel Gossman.
The University Committee on Research in the Humanities and Social Sciences of Princeton University has generously contributed to the publication of this volume.
One of the greatest Romantic historians and immensely popular during his lifetime, Jules Michelet (1798-1874) fell into disfavour among the positivist historians who came after him and who regarded his work with disdain as "literature." In the 1920s and 30s, however, he began to be rediscovered and rehabilitated by the members of the influential Annales school. The objects of Michelet’s interest—living conditions, popular mentalities, laws and the arts, the historian’s relation to the objects of his study, no less than political history—have since come to occupy a central place in modern historical research.
A free online-only supplement contains an essay on Michelet by John Stuart Mill from the Edinburgh Review (January 1844) and several studies of Michelet by Lionel Gossman.
The University Committee on Research in the Humanities and Social Sciences of Princeton University has generously contributed to the publication of this volume.
On History: Introduction to World History (1831); Opening Address at the Faculty of Letters, 9 January 1834; Preface to History of France (1869)
Jules Michelet, edited and translated by Flora Kimmich, Lionel Gossman, Edward K. Kaplan | October 2013
vi + 167 | 6.14" x 9.21" (234 x 156 mm)
Open Book Classics Series, vol. 1 | ISSN: 2054-216X (Print) ; 2054-2178 (Online)
ISBN Paperback: 9781909254701
ISBN Hardback: 9781909254718
ISBN Digital (PDF): 9781909254725
ISBN Digital ebook (epub): 9781909254732
ISBN Digital ebook (mobi): 9781909254749
DOI: 10.11647/OBP.0036
BIC subject codes: HBG (General and world history), HBJD (European history), HBAH (Historiography)
Contributors
Acknowledgments
1. Foreword
Lionel Gossman
2. Chronology of Jules Michelet
3. Michelet, Introduction to World History (1831)
Translated by Flora Kimmich
Notes and Clarifications
4. Michelet, Opening Address at the Faculty of Letters, 9 January 1834
Translated by Lionel Gossman
5. Michelet, Preface to History of France (1869), with Introduction by Edward K. Kaplan
Translated by Edward K. Kaplan
6. Select Bibliography of Critical Writing on Michelet
Acknowledgments
1. Foreword
Lionel Gossman
2. Chronology of Jules Michelet
3. Michelet, Introduction to World History (1831)
Translated by Flora Kimmich
Notes and Clarifications
4. Michelet, Opening Address at the Faculty of Letters, 9 January 1834
Translated by Lionel Gossman
5. Michelet, Preface to History of France (1869), with Introduction by Edward K. Kaplan
Translated by Edward K. Kaplan
6. Select Bibliography of Critical Writing on Michelet
© 2013 Lionel Gossman, Edward K. Kaplan and Flora Kimmich
This book is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license (CC-BY 3.0). This license allows you to share, copy, distribute and transmit the work; to adapt the work and to make commercial use of the work providing attribution is made to the authors (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work). Attribution should include the following information:
Jules Michelet, On History: Introduction to World History (1831); Opening Address at the Faculty of Letters, 9 January 1834; Preface to History of France (1869). Trans. Flora Kimmich, Lionel Gossman and Edward K. Kaplan. Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2013, http://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0036
Further details about CC-BY licenses are available at: http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
Every effort has been made to identify and contact copyright holders; any omissions or errors will be corrected if notification is made to the publisher.
Frontespiece image: Tomb of Jules Michelet by Antonin Mercié, Père Lachaise cemetery, Paris. Photo by Pierre-Yves Beaudouin, http://openbookpublishers.com/htmlreader/978-1-909254-70-1/image/Fig1_fmt.png
The translation of Introduction to World History and of the Opening Address at the Faculty of Letters presented in this volume are based upon the following French edition:
J. Michelet, Introduction à l’histoire universelle, suivi du Discours d’ouverture prononcé à la Faculté des Lettres le 9 janvier 1834 (Paris: Librairie Classique de L. Hachette, 1834).
You can read it online at http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=x-gOAAAAQAAJ&pg.
The first edition of the book, published in April 1831 with the same publisher, is also available online at http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b8626729v.
The translation of the 1869 Preface to the History of France is based on the edition of Charles Morazé (Paris: Armand Colin, 1962), and checked against Michelet’s Oeuvres complètes, volume IV, ed. Paul Viallaneix (Paris: Flammarion, 1974).
A 1880 edition of the book (Paris: A. Lacroix & Co.) is available at http://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Histoire_de_France_%28Jules_Michelet%29, while another edition by Gabriel Monod can be read on-line at http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/38243.
Please find below the online supplements available for this volume:
1. John Stuart Mill, Review of M. Michelet, ‘Histoire de France’, The Edinburgh Review, January 1844, 159: 1-39. Click here to view and download the pdf.
2. Lionel Gossman, ‘The Go-Between: Jules Michelet 1798-1874’, Modern Language Notes, May 1974, 89/4: 503-541. © 1974, by kind permission of The Johns Hopkins University Press. Click here to view and download the pdf.
3. Lionel Gossman, ‘Jules Michelet and Romantic Historiography,’ European Writers: The Romantic Century, ed. Jacques Barzun (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1985), pp 571-606. From Ed. George Stade. Scribner Writers Online - European Writers Collection. © 2010, by kind permission of Cengage Learning, Inc. Click here to view and download the pdf.
4. Lionel Gossman, ‘Jules Michelet: National History, Biography, Autobiography.’ Adapted from the article ‘Jules Michelet: histoire nationale, biographie, autobiographie’, Littérature, May, 1996, 102: 29-54. Click here to view and download the pdf.
5. Lionel Gossman, ‘Michelet and Natural History: The Alibi of Nature’, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 3 September 2001, 145: 283-333. © 2001, by kind permission of the American Philosophical Society. Click here to view and download the pdf
J. Michelet, Introduction à l’histoire universelle, suivi du Discours d’ouverture prononcé à la Faculté des Lettres le 9 janvier 1834 (Paris: Librairie Classique de L. Hachette, 1834).
You can read it online at http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=x-gOAAAAQAAJ&pg.
The first edition of the book, published in April 1831 with the same publisher, is also available online at http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b8626729v.
The translation of the 1869 Preface to the History of France is based on the edition of Charles Morazé (Paris: Armand Colin, 1962), and checked against Michelet’s Oeuvres complètes, volume IV, ed. Paul Viallaneix (Paris: Flammarion, 1974).
A 1880 edition of the book (Paris: A. Lacroix & Co.) is available at http://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Histoire_de_France_%28Jules_Michelet%29, while another edition by Gabriel Monod can be read on-line at http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/38243.
Please find below the online supplements available for this volume:
1. John Stuart Mill, Review of M. Michelet, ‘Histoire de France’, The Edinburgh Review, January 1844, 159: 1-39. Click here to view and download the pdf.
2. Lionel Gossman, ‘The Go-Between: Jules Michelet 1798-1874’, Modern Language Notes, May 1974, 89/4: 503-541. © 1974, by kind permission of The Johns Hopkins University Press. Click here to view and download the pdf.
3. Lionel Gossman, ‘Jules Michelet and Romantic Historiography,’ European Writers: The Romantic Century, ed. Jacques Barzun (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1985), pp 571-606. From Ed. George Stade. Scribner Writers Online - European Writers Collection. © 2010, by kind permission of Cengage Learning, Inc. Click here to view and download the pdf.
4. Lionel Gossman, ‘Jules Michelet: National History, Biography, Autobiography.’ Adapted from the article ‘Jules Michelet: histoire nationale, biographie, autobiographie’, Littérature, May, 1996, 102: 29-54. Click here to view and download the pdf.
5. Lionel Gossman, ‘Michelet and Natural History: The Alibi of Nature’, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 3 September 2001, 145: 283-333. © 2001, by kind permission of the American Philosophical Society. Click here to view and download the pdf