Books in the Harvard Historical Studies (HUP) series

In this brilliantly conceived book, Christopher Hilliard reveals the extraordinary history of "ordinary" voices. In capturing the creative lives of ordinary people-would-be fiction-writers and poets who until now have left scarcely a mark on written history-Hilliard sensitively reconstructs the literary culture of a democratic age.

The foremost historian of 18th-century France explores how the Old Regime's institutions operated and how they were understood by the people who worked within them. Roche depicts the "culture of appearances"-the food and clothing, living quarters, and reading material of the peasant, the merchant, the noble, the King, from Paris to the provinces.

As readers of Russian literature know, the nineteenth century was a time of pervasive financial anxiety. Russians of all classes were enmeshed in networks of credit and debt, and borrowing and lending shaped perceptions of material and moral worth. Sergei Antonov recreates this imperial world of borrowers, bankrupts, lenders, and loan sharks.