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Jean-Paul Marat
Prophet of Terror
-
Keith Michael Baker
Language:
English
Published/Copyright:
2025
About this book
A landmark biography of one of the most notorious and controversial protagonists of the French Revolution—Jean-Paul Marat.
Who better to pen an authoritative biography of Jean-Paul Marat (1743–93) than preeminent historian of France Keith Michael Baker? Decades in the making, this monumental work takes readers on a journey through the intriguing, sometimes shocking life of this writer and thinker.
Starting with Marat’s Swiss family and upbringing, Baker then sheds light on his early years in England, his career as an aspiring scientist in Paris, his gradual transformation from impassioned pamphleteer to revolutionary newspaperman, and, finally, his murder and martyrdom. Throughout, Baker offers readers the unique opportunity to reconsider the outbreak and development of the French Revolution through Marat’s eyes and in his own words. To help make sense of Marat’s trajectory, he shows how his violent and incendiary public calls to render unseen forces visible, to inject immediacy into an increasingly abstract modern world, would transform classical republicanism into the language of Terror.
Far beyond a standard rendering of Marat’s life and its milestones, this biography offers readers an opportunity to see the French Revolution as never before, through the perspective of one of its major figures. Baker’s book reveals how someone like Marat could go from translating Newton and engaging with Franklin to calling for an ever-growing number of heads to roll—a transformation as chilling as ever.
Who better to pen an authoritative biography of Jean-Paul Marat (1743–93) than preeminent historian of France Keith Michael Baker? Decades in the making, this monumental work takes readers on a journey through the intriguing, sometimes shocking life of this writer and thinker.
Starting with Marat’s Swiss family and upbringing, Baker then sheds light on his early years in England, his career as an aspiring scientist in Paris, his gradual transformation from impassioned pamphleteer to revolutionary newspaperman, and, finally, his murder and martyrdom. Throughout, Baker offers readers the unique opportunity to reconsider the outbreak and development of the French Revolution through Marat’s eyes and in his own words. To help make sense of Marat’s trajectory, he shows how his violent and incendiary public calls to render unseen forces visible, to inject immediacy into an increasingly abstract modern world, would transform classical republicanism into the language of Terror.
Far beyond a standard rendering of Marat’s life and its milestones, this biography offers readers an opportunity to see the French Revolution as never before, through the perspective of one of its major figures. Baker’s book reveals how someone like Marat could go from translating Newton and engaging with Franklin to calling for an ever-growing number of heads to roll—a transformation as chilling as ever.
Reviews
“This is a monumental and definitive biography. Through his expert knowledge and gripping, clear writing, Baker has developed a brilliant political portrait of one of the most important revolutionaries in modern history.”
— David Bell, Princeton University“Jean-Paul Marat is a dramatic story of political delusion, that concludes—in the diptych of Condorcet and Marat—in a moving and eloquent alternate vista of reason, sympathy, and the possibility of liberal society.”
— Emma Rothschild, Harvard University“An astounding work of scholarship that will be valued by French Revolution scholars for decades. Following the complicated life of Jean-Paul Marat from beginning to end, it is at once a rich analysis of his thought and an extraordinarily detailed history of the actions, beliefs, and struggles that constituted the fraught daily politics of the French Revolution.”
— William H. Sewell Jr, University of Chicago“A monument of sparkling erudition that brilliantly achieves the daunting task of understanding the most contentious and unsympathetic of French Revolutionaries as a man rather than as a monster. Beautifully written, profoundly researched, and impressively and lucidly argued, Jean-Paul Marat is a biography for the ages.”
— Colin Jones, emeritus, Queen Mary University of London"Baker’s nine-hundred-page biography of Jean-Paul Marat, the journalist turned revolutionary who went on to orchestrate the Terror, is both a fascinating character study and a sweeping history of the period. Baker’s achievement is to show how a combination of resentment, petty grievance, and the radical mood of the cosmopolitan world of the late eighteenth century came together in Marat to form a deeply paranoid, conspiratorial man. Baker’s is a perfect bedside book for anyone wanting to understand the origins of Jacobinism and to make sense of one of its most fascinating figures.”
— Jacobin“A magisterial biography, obviously the fruit of decades of reading and research. . . . I doubt that any biography in English of Marat will be called for after this book.”
— The Lamp MagazineTopics
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Frontmatter
i -
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CONTENTS
vii -
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INTRODUCTION
1 -
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ONE THE SWISS FAMILY MARA
11 - ''A LITTLE MAN ... A QlJICK EYE"
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TWO ON THE MOVE
25 -
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THREE MAKING IT IN LONDON
36 -
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FOUR LOCATING THE SOUL
49 -
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FIVE WILKES AND LIBERTY
62 -
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SIX THE CHAINS OF SLAVERY
74 -
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SEVEN DOCTOR TO THE INCURABLE
97 - AGONISTIC SCIENCE
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EIGHT BIG GAME
117 -
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NINE A NEW NEWTON? "
137 -
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TEN FOLLOWING FRANKLIN
147 -
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ELEVEN THE FIGHT FOR GLORY
169 -
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TWELVE DESTINATION MADRID?
193 - THYMOTIC POLITICS
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THIRTEEN REVOLUTIONARY REBIRTH
221 -
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FOURTEEN THE PEOPLE'S EYE
256 -
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FIFTEEN ENEMIES OF THE PEOPLE
290 -
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SIXTEEN HOW MANY HEADS?
316 -
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SEVENTEEN REMEMBER NANCY
328 -
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EIGHTEEN MOBILIZING THE PEOPLE
348 -
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NINETEEN SALUS POPULI
377 -
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TWENTY REPRESSION, REVISION, DESPAIR
415 - THE FIRST MODERN POPULIST
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TWENTY -ONE A MACHINE THAT WOULD NOT WORK
457 -
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TWENTY -TWO THE PEOPLE'S REVOLUTION
506 -
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TWENTY -THREE THE MONSTER AND THE MOUNTAIN
564 -
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TWENTY -FOUR TO KILL A KING?
611 -
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TWENTY -FIVE A PARTY OF ONE
672 -
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TWENTY -SIX THE MARAT MOMENT
737 -
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TWENTY -SEVEN PURGE
779 -
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CONCLUSION
827 -
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I
835 -
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NOTE ON SOURCES
837 -
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ABBREVIATIONS
839 -
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NOTES
841 -
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INDEX
897
Publishing information
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
eBook published on:
November 18, 2025
eBook ISBN:
9780226820934
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
eBook ISBN:
9780226820934
Keywords for this book
Revolution; France; Biography; Jacobin; Terror; Pamphleteer; Journalist; Radical; Republicanism; Swiss; Scientist; Writer; Paris; Enlightenment; L'Am; i peuple; Guillotine; Corday; Robespierre; Danton; Ancien; Régime; Bastille; National; Convention; Montagnard; Sans-culottes; Girondins; Rhetoric; Propaganda; Assassination; Baker; Historian; 18th; eightenth; century; Politics; Radicalization; Violence; Democracy; Monarchy; Uprising; Execution; Journalism
Audience(s) for this book
For an expert adult audience, including professional development and academic research
