Search results for ""author robert forster""

Originally published in 1971. In The House of Saulx-Tavanes: Versailles and Burgundy, 1700–1830, Professor Robert Forster examines the noble family of Saulx-Tavanes from the reign of Louis XIV to the Restoration. He provides readers with an account of a single aristocratic family's relationship to the changing political culture of the eighteenth century. Forster explores how an old aristocratic family promoted itself in the royal court, how the Saulx-Tavanes managed their estate remotely from Paris, and how the family's relationship to its creditors changed over time. Forster examines the ambiguities of one noble family's transition from provincial independence to courtly dependence and, eventually, to revolution. This book is an account of how the Saulx-Tavanes—a family of émigré nobles—preserved their life, revenue, reputation, esteem, and place in a French society transformed by political change and revolution.

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Originally published in 1980. A social historian of modern France, Robert Forster discovered a series of father-to-son letters that presented an unusual opportunity to trace in human terms the impact of institutions and cultural norms on eighteenth-century French society. From these letters and other family papers, Forster reconstructed a family biography of the Deponts of La Rochelle over four generations. Their story affords new insights into the workings of institutions—economic, religious, legal, administrative—the mentality of provincial notables, the world of Parisian high finance and salon society, and the response of a socially mobile family to the challenges of the century, climaxing in the French Revolution of 1789. Forster demonstrates how real people in an upwardly mobile family coped with their changing society, moved from overseas trade to local and then national office, managed their wealth, treated their children, and then parried the psychological shocks accompanying their ascent to status and power. It is the story not of a "class" response to abstract trends or forces identified by the historian in retrospect but of flesh-and-blood human beings grappling with day-to-day decisions and revealing a full range of human ambiguity and inconsistency. This study offers perspective on the emergence by 1800 of a new elite in France—a social amalgam of landlords, administrators, and professional men, inculcated with a national awareness and a cautious political liberalism. These were the notables who would govern France in the next century. Forster's approach, uncommon among social historians, combines narrative and analytical modes of historiography. Based on archival materials in La Rochelle and Paris, the book blends economic, social, cultural, and political history.

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Originally published in 1960. This is a regional study of the nobility of Toulouse in the eighteenth century. The complex notion of class and the peculiarities of each region in France during the Ancien Régime make it difficult for historians to render a general portrait of the provincial French aristocracy. This study describes the economic interests and investments of noblemen in Toulouse. Some of their activities follow the classic pattern of "seigniorial reaction" and thus illustrate ideas posed by Marc Bloch. Others suggest that the Toulousian gentlemen were conscientious landlords. The Toulousian noble was essentially a gentilhomme campagnard, a country gentleman, in regard to his source of revenue, his outlook, and his mode of living. This book should make clear the full meaning of this expression.

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BOOK OF THE YEAR 2017 - MOJO MAGAZINE & UNCUT MAGAZINE "In early '77 I asked Grant if he'd form a band with me. `No,' was his blunt reply." Grant McLennan didn't want to be in a band. He couldn't play an instrument; Charlie Chaplin was his hero du jour. And yet, when Robert Forster wrote Hemingway, Genet, Chandler and Joyce into his lyrics, McLennan couldn't resist a second invitation to become 80s indie sensation The Go Betweens. The friends would collaborate for three decades, until Grant's premature death in 2006. Beautifully written - like lyrics, like prose - Grant & I is a rock memoir akin to no other. Part `making of', part music industry expose, part buddy-book, this is a delicate and perceptive celebration of creative endeavour. With wit and candour, Robert Forster pays tribute to a band who found huge success in the margins, having friendship at its heart.

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