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Robert Darnton

Biography

Robert Darnton

Robert Darnton is the Carl H. Pforzheimer University Professor and the director of the University Library at Harvard University. His honors include a MacArthur Prize, the National Humanities Medal, and election to the French Legion of Honor. He is the author of THE GREAT CAT MASSACRE and THE FORBIDDEN BESTSELLERS OF PRE-REVOLUTIONARY FRANCE, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award.

Robert Darnton

Books by Robert Darnton

by Robert Darnton - History, Nonfiction

Robert Darnton recreates three historical worlds in which censorship shaped literary expression in distinctive ways. In 18th-century France, censors, authors and booksellers collaborated in making literature by navigating the intricate culture of royal privilege. Shaken by the Sepoy uprising in 1857, the British Raj undertook a vast surveillance of every aspect of Indian life, including its literary output. And in Communist East Germany, censorship was a component of the party program to engineer society.