Revolution - Jennifer Donnelly [162]
A NOTE ON SOURCES
Revolution is a historical novel. It features both real and fictional people, and is set both in present-day Brooklyn—a world I lived in—and eighteenth-century France—one I did not.
Re-creating the lost Paris of Alex’s diary required a great deal of research. A full bibliography follows, but I would first like to acknowledge my debt to several works in particular.
For understanding the causes, major players, and main events of the French Revolution, I relied most heavily on Thomas Carlyle’s The French Revolution: A History and Simon Schama’s Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution.
Deborah Cadbury’s The Lost King of France: Revolution, Revenge and the Search for Louis XVII provided an invaluable account of Louis XVII’s life and imprisonment, and of the process of DNA testing used to identify his heart. The quote from Dr. Pierre Joseph Desault that appears on page 188 of Revolution was taken from page 160 of Cadbury’s book. Philippe Delorme, author of several books on Louis XVII, is the real-life historian who organized the DNA tests on Louis-Charles’ heart. His website, louis17.chez.com, also provided information on the testing process.
When Andi arrives at G’s house, she reads letters from prisoners condemned to death during the Terror. The excerpts I used are from actual letters and were taken from Olivier Blanc’s Last Letters: Prisons and Prisoners of the French Revolution 1793–1794.
The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri, one of my favorite poems, was a major inspiration for Revolution. The epigraph and the lines used at the beginning of each section of the book are taken from the Longfellow translation.
To help Andi write her thesis, I read The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century by Alex Ross and online articles including: “My Radiohead Adventure” by Paul Lansky, at silvertone.princeton.edu/~paul/radiohead.ml.html, “Tristan chord” on wikipedia.org, “Move Over Messiaen” at gatheringevidence.com, “What Is It About Wagner?” by Stephen Pettitt at entertainment.timesonline.co.uk, “The Devil’s Music” by Finlo Rohrer at news.bbc.co.uk, and “Greatest. Music. Ever,” an article written by Bernard Chazelle and posted on tinyrevolution.com.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Alighieri, Dante. The Divine Comedy. Illustrations by Gustave Doré. Translation by Henry W. Longfellow. Edison, NJ: Chartwell Books, Inc., 2007.
Ambrose, Tom. Godfather of the Revolution: The Life of Philippe Égalité, Duc d’Orléans. London: Peter Owen Publishers, 2008.
Azerrad, Michael. Our Band Could Be Your Life: Scenes from the American Indie Underground 1981–1991. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 2001.
Betham-Edwards, M., ed. Young’s Travels in France During the Years 1787, 1788, 1789. London: G. Bell and Sons, Ltd., 1924.
Blanc, Olivier. Last Letters: Prisons and Prisoners of the French Revolution 1793–1794. Translated by Alan Sheridan. New York: Michael di Capua Books, 1987.
Böhmer, Günter. The Wonderful World of Puppets. Translated by Gerald Morice. Boston: Plays, Inc., 1969.
Brock, Alan St. H. A History of Fireworks. London: George G. Harrap & Co., Ltd., 1949.
Brown, Frederick. Theater and Revolution: The Culture of the French Stage. New York: Viking Press, 1980.
Cadbury, Deborah. The Lost King of France: Revolution, Revenge and the Search for Louis XVII. London: Fourth Estate, 2002.
Carlyle, Thomas. The French Revolution: A History. Vols. I and II. New York: John W. Lovell Company, 1837.
Castelot, André. The Turbulent City: Paris 1783–1871. Translated by Denise Folliot. New York and Evanston: Harper & Row, 1962.
Collins, Herbert F. Talma: A Biography of an Actor. London: Faber and