CLAUDE MANCERON - The Wing From America. The Men Of Liberty. Volume Two 1778-1781

London England, Eyre Methuen, 1979. 1st English Edition, Binding: Cloth, Very Good/Very Good. 8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾" tall 0413401405 Hardback Hardback. Very slight shelf wear to top edge of D/J. Translated from the French by Nancy Amphoux. Claude Manceron's first book in this sequence was described as follows: 'The Men of Liberty is the first of a projected eight volumes on the French revolution. Set in the ancien regime, covering the period 1774-78, it is simply tjhe most enthralling piece of history I have read for a very long time (Alex de Jonge, Financial Times. This sequel to the author's first striking volume, which offered a mosaic of Europe on the eve of the French Revolution, takes up the tale in 1778 and evokes the years in which the French allied themselves with the American colonies in their fight against the British. The book opens with the military foray made by John Paul Jones, just named 'commodre' of the American navy, attacking the country estate in Scotland of the father who refused to acknowledge him; and closes with the birth of a son to Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI of France, an heir who would surely bring the Bourbon dynasty securely into the nineteenth century. During the course of these years we see the Marquis de La Fayette - at the centre of French collaboration with the American colonists; Mozart stranded in Paris; the Empress Maria Theresa on her deathbed; Benjamin Franklin wooing a French salonniere; the future Madame Rolad receiving the flirtatious advances of the painter Greuze; Marat seeking the support of the Academic for an invention he hopes will enable one to catch a glimpse of the soul. As in his first volume, Manceron eveokes the known and the unknown, the exploiters and the enslaved, the bankers and the visionaries. His portrait of the social and political fabric of a period - of a host of individuals in context - is fascinating. Illustrated. 584 pp. (We carry a wide selection of titles in The Arts, Theology, History, Politics, Social and Physical Sciences. academic and scholarly books and Modern First Editions ,and all types of Academic Literature.).