Every year no fewer than 2,000 items are published on the French Revolution. Anyone approaching the subject has immediately to confront the difficulty of choosing what to read. This is exacerbated by the shifting contours of the subject itself. Traditional political and diplomatic history has faded under the pressure from social and economic historians, but now they are challenged, in turn, by the rapid growth of intellectual, cultural and gendered history.

The purpose of this Reader is not to impose order where there is none but, rather, to capture the range of activities in which historians are engaged. Constructed according to a broadly 'social' and 'political' perspective, it tries to identify those books and articles that may come to be seen as key contributions to the subject. There are five thematic sections: Interpretations and Debates; Socio-Cultural Approaches; Gender in the Public Sphere; Revolutionary Politics; The Crowd, Terror and Counter-Terror.