1926 Fourth Edtn THE FRENCH REVOLUTION By Nesta H. Webster

1926 Fourth Edition
THE FRENCH REVOLUTION
By Nesta H. Webster

KEY DETAILS
Condition: Good
Format: Hardcover, Octavo (Standard) (8vo 6 × 9 in 152 × 229 mm )
Note: Binding/size selection follows standard bibliographic conventions and is approximate; exact measurements may vary.
Published By: Constable and Company Ltd, London, 1926
Language: English
Provenance: Contemporary ink ownership inscription to the title page: “St. Saviour’s / London / March 1940.”
Collation: xv, 519 pp. Complete.
SKU: BTETM0002683
Shipping Info: Approximate Package Dimensions H: 12.5, L: 30, W: 25 (Units: cm), W: 2Kg
Tracked Shipping, Insurance Coverage as per Customer Request

DESCRIPTION
The French Revolution
A STUDY IN DEMOCRACY - COMPLETE WITH THREE PLANS
London: Constable and Company Ltd., 1926. Fourth Edition.
Original publisher’s blue cloth, spine lettered in gilt. Octavo. xv, 519 pp., illustrated with three plans: the Bastille, the Château of Versailles, and the Tuileries.

A substantial study of the French Revolution by Nesta H. Webster, presenting the interpretation of revolutionary events which would become central to her later writings on secret societies, political conspiracy and revolutionary movements.
The publisher’s edition statement records the work as first published in 1919, with a second edition also appearing in 1919, reprints in 1920 and 1921, a third edition in 1922, and the present fourth edition in 1926.
The fourth edition retains the xv, 519-page extent of the earlier editions, but is printed on a noticeably thinner paper stock. Comparison with the 1919 second edition and multiple copies examined of the 1922 third edition shows the 1926 issue to have a substantially slimmer text block despite retaining the same pagination. The change appears therefore to represent a production alteration introduced by the fourth edition rather than any reduction in textual content.
Webster approaches the Revolution not simply as the consequence of economic distress, social inequality and political failure, but as a series of events in which organised factions, political intrigue and covert revolutionary networks played a significant role. Her narrative encompasses the fall of the Bastille, the march on Versailles, the flight to Varennes, the invasions and siege of the Tuileries, the September Massacres and the Terror, supported by an extensive list of contemporary and later authorities.
Her interpretation was controversial from the outset. Webster made extensive use of historical sources, but her tendency to explain revolutionary movements through coordinated conspiratorial activity placed her outside what became the prevailing academic interpretation of the French Revolution.
The work is consequently of interest not only as political and revolutionary history, but also as an important document in the development of twentieth-century conspiracy literature.

The volume contains three separately listed plans:
The Bastille, facing p. 76
The Château of Versailles, facing p. 154
The Tuileries, facing p. 224

All three are present in this copy.

PROVENANCE
Contemporary ink ownership inscription to the title page: “St. Saviour’s / London / March 1940.”

The precise institution represented by the inscription has not been conclusively identified.
One plausible identification is St Saviour’s Church, Ealing, whose purpose-built Clergy House incorporated a dedicated library furnished with fitted bookcases and cupboards and was occupied by the parish clergy during this period.
The incumbent in March 1940 was the Rev. Wilfrid Henry Aglionby, M.C. (1890–1958), who had served at St Saviour’s from 1936.
St Saviour’s Church itself was destroyed by incendiary bombing later in 1940, while the adjoining Clergy House survived.
The identification of the inscription with the Ealing institution remains provisional, and the handwriting has not been attributed to Aglionby or to any other individual member of the clergy. Further archival research is ongoing.
Small pencilled “10.” to the rear pastedown, probably an earlier bookseller’s or price notation.

CONDITION, COLLATION & COPY NOTES
COLLATION
xv, 519 pp. Complete.

Plans: Complete with all three called-for plans:
The Bastille, facing p.76
The Château of Versailles, facing p.154
The Tuileries, facing p.224

Contents comprise:
Preface; Authorities Consulted; Prologue; The Siege of the Bastille; The March on Versailles; The Invasion of the Tuileries; The Siege of the Tuileries; The Massacres of September; The Reign of Terror; Epilogue; Appendix; and Index.
No dust jacket is present.

Original publisher’s blue cloth, spine lettered in gilt.
Spine considerably sunned to brown and rubbed, with fraying, chipping and localised loss of cloth at the head. Boards rubbed and marked, with wear to corners and extremities.
Binding remains sound.
Foxing pronounced to the preliminary leaves and title page, with lighter scattered spotting internally and to the endpapers. The main body of the text is generally cleaner than the preliminaries.
Contemporary ownership inscription to upper title page as described under Provenance.

Please see Photos as part of condition report.

REFERENCES
National Diet Library, bibliographic record 000006425747: The French Revolution: A Study in Democracy, Second Edition, London, Constable and Company Ltd., 1919 — xv, 519 pp., three plans, 23 cm.
Library of Congress classification: DC161.
Open Library: OL7209759M.
Publication history: First published 1919; Second Edition 1919; reprinted 1920 and 1921; Third Edition 1922; Fourth Edition 1926.
Webster, Nesta H., The French Revolution: A Study in Democracy, London: Constable and Company Ltd., 1919.

SYNOPSIS
First published in 1919, Nesta H. Webster's The French Revolution follows the Revolution from the political and social tensions preceding 1789 through the fall of the Bastille, the removal of the royal family from Versailles, the destruction of the monarchy, the September Massacres and the Terror.
Its central concern, however, is not simply what happened but how revolutionary crowds were organised and directed.
Webster rejects the idea that the great revolutionary journées can be understood solely as spontaneous manifestations of popular anger. Throughout the book she attempts to distinguish between ordinary participants in revolutionary events and those whom she identifies as their instigators, organisers and political beneficiaries.
The opening Prologue establishes Webster's interpretation of the political atmosphere before the Revolution and the competing interests operating around the court, Paris and the emerging revolutionary movement.
In The Siege of the Bastille, she examines the disturbances surrounding Paris in July 1789 and argues that the celebrated assault on the fortress resulted from a combination of organised agitation, rumours, political manoeuvring and crowd action rather than a single spontaneous popular uprising.
The March on Versailles considers the October Days of 1789, when thousands marched from Paris to Versailles and compelled Louis XVI and the royal family to return with them to Paris. Webster again concentrates upon the organisers and political interests which she believed lay behind the apparent spontaneity of the crowd.
The succeeding sections follow the increasingly violent confrontation between revolutionary factions and the monarchy. The Invasion of the Tuileries and The Siege of the Tuileries examine the attacks upon the royal residence and the collapse of royal authority during 1792.
The Massacres of September addresses the killing of prisoners in Paris during September 1792, while The Reign of Terror carries Webster's narrative into the period dominated by the revolutionary government, political purges and mass executions.
An Epilogue and Appendix draw together her interpretation of the Revolution and the documentary evidence upon which she relied.
Webster's conclusions remain controversial. Modern historians do not generally accept her overarching conspiratorial explanation of the Revolution, but the book retains significance both as an idiosyncratic interpretation of 1789–94 and as an important precursor to the political and secret-society theories that came to dominate her later writings.
It is therefore a work with two distinct historical lives: as an attempted revisionist history of the French Revolution and, increasingly, as a primary document in the development of modern conspiracy literature.

AUTHOR BIO
Nesta Helen Webster (1876–1960) was a British author whose writings ranged from historical novels and studies of revolutionary France to works concerned with revolutionary movements, political conspiracy and secret societies.

Born Nesta Helen Bevan in 1876, she developed an enduring interest in eighteenth-century France and the French Revolution. Her early works included The Chevalier de Boufflers: A Romance of the French Revolution (1910), followed eventually by the much more substantial historical study The French Revolution: A Study in Democracy in 1919.
The arguments developed in The French Revolution became increasingly central to her subsequent writing. Webster came to interpret major political upheavals as the product not simply of social or economic forces but of organised revolutionary networks operating across national boundaries. She pursued these ideas in World Revolution: The Plot Against Civilization (1921) and, most famously, Secret Societies and Subversive Movements (1924).
Her later writings incorporated increasingly sweeping and controversial conspiracy theories, including claims concerning Freemasonry, the Illuminati and international revolutionary organisations. These interpretations are not accepted by mainstream historical scholarship and aspects of her later political writing are inseparable from the conspiratorial and antisemitic currents of the inter-war period.
Nevertheless, Webster remains an historically significant figure in the development of modern conspiracy literature. Her books continued to be reprinted long after her death and have attracted sustained interest from scholars studying conspiracism, political extremism and the transmission of secret-society narratives during the twentieth century.
The present French Revolution, written before the best-known of these later works, is particularly revealing because it shows many of Webster's characteristic ideas already taking shape within what was presented as a detailed narrative history of the Revolution.