Abstract
Robert Darnton has recently found that L.S. Mercier's utopia, L'An 2440, was the most widely sold clandestine work of the late eighteenth century. This article first attempts to explain the appeal of the book to contemporaries. It then notes the sudden and complete eclipse of the work and offers an explanation for this based on the political achievements of the French Revolution on the one hand and on a shift in the climate of opinion on the other.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 648-667 |
| Number of pages | 20 |
| Journal | History of Political Thought |
| Volume | 24 |
| Issue number | 4 |
| State | Published - Dec 2001 |
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- History
- Sociology and Political Science
- Philosophy