Liberty The Lives and Times of Six Women in Revolutionary France

"Throughout the French Revolution, women, inspired by a longing for liberty and equality, played a vital role in stoking the fervour and idealism of those years. In her history of the Revolution, Lucy Moore paints a portrait of six extraordinary women who risked everything for the chance to exercise their ambition and make their mark on history." "At the heart of Paris's intellectual movement, Germaine de Stael was a figure like no other. Passionate, fiercely intelligent and as consumed by love affairs as she was by politics, she helped to write the 1791 Constitution at the salon in which she entertained the great thinkers of the age. At the other end of the social scale, her working-class counterparts patrolled the streets of Paris with pistols in their belts. Theroigne de Mericourt was an unhappy courtesan when she fell in love with revolutionary ideals. Denied a political role because of her sex, she nevertheless campaigned tirelessly until a mob beating left her broken in both mind and body. Later came the glittering merveilleuses, whose glamour, beauty and propensity for revealing outfits propelled them to the top of post-revolutionary society. Exuberant, decadent Theresia Tallien reportedly helped engineer Robespierre's downfall. In so doing, she and her fellow "sans-chemises" ushered in a new world that combined sexual license with the amorality of the new Republic."--BOOK JACKET.Moore, Lucy is the author of 'Liberty The Lives and Times of Six Women in Revolutionary France', published 2007 under ISBN 9780060825263 and ISBN 006082526X.