Private Lives and Public Affairs : The Causes Célèbres of Prerevolutionary France

Sarah Maza
University of California Press
 9780520201637
0-520-20163-9

From 1770 to 1789 a succession of highly publicized cases riveted the attention of the French public. Maza argues that the reporting of these private scandals had a decisive effect on the way in which the French public came to understand public issues in the years before the Revolution.