In 1971, Robert Darnton published one of the most influential journal articles of the last century on the origins of the French Revolution, titled ‘The High Enlightenment and the Low-Life of Literature in Pre-Revolutionary France’. Here, he moved away from traditional explanations for the revolution, such as the monarchy’s financial troubles and the challenge to the nobility from the bourgeoisie, and took a novel cultural approach, concentrating on the late period of the French Enlightenment. The Enlightenment’s high principles, above all its attack on religious bigotry and insistence that reason and humanity should govern society, Darnton argued, attracted to Paris thousands of idealistic young men hoping to become the next Voltaire or Diderot.

On arrival, however, the newcomers found that the ‘heroic’ period of the Enlightenment was now over. The great philosophes had been replaced by mediocrities who kept the profits of literature firmly to themselves and shut out all but a few of the newcomers. Instead of reaching the heights, these aspiring writers were banished to squalid garrets, eking out a living writing scurrilous pamphlets, trashy sentimental novels and pornography. From the depths of what Darnton termed Grub Street, they nursed a visceral hatred of the cultural and political establishment that had excluded them and seized the opportunity that the revolution provided. As Darnton pointed out, the number of revolutionary leaders with backgrounds in Grub Street is striking: Marat, Desmoulins, Brissot, Hébert, Collot d’Herbois and many others.

Now, towards the end of his career, Darnton has revisited its beginning. He sticks by the article’s original argument, but introduces more nuance. In the flush of youth and the excitement of launching a new idea, he admits, he may have overstated some of his case. The frustrations of literary