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Playwright, politician, publisher, entrepreneur, spy, and rebel: few men of eighteenth-century letters led a more varied or controversial life than Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais. From humble beginnings as a watchmaker to exalted fame as the author of The Marriage of Figaro, Beaumarchais was a self-made man in a time when self-fashioning was close to impossible, a revolutionary in both his life and his art.
From these pages emerges the portrait of a man whose talents and activities extended far beyond the comedies that made him famous. We meet a political visionary who openly supported the American revolutionaries on the eve of his country’s own political upheaval; a reckless but brilliant entrepreneur; and an early champion of the rights of artists and intellectual property. Most of all, we meet a writer whose wit and social acumen was matched only by his determination to publish on his own terms—even at the risk of political exile.
In a narrative that reaches from the courts of Paris to secretive rendezvous in London and Germany, from Europe to America, and from the theater of war to the performances of the famed Comédie-Français, Maurice Lever re-creates the exciting and often perilous times in which Beaumarchais lived. Incorporating countless letters and firsthand accounts, Beaumarchais is an irresistibly lively and engaging account of an extraordinary life.
"Starred Review. With vast personal resources of energy and eclectic talents, he led a peripatetic life, rendering quite difficult, acknowledges Lever (Sade, 1993, etc.), the task of weaving its many strands into a single linear thread. But the author artfully succeeds from start to finish." - Kirkus Reviews
"This edition is packed with adventures, leaving one to wonder what other entertaining anecdotes are in the three-volume French version." - Publishers Weekly
"Lever's revealing biography is recommended for all public and academic libraries." - Library Journal
This information about Beaumarchais was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
One of the most respected scholars of 17th and 18th century French literature, Maurice Lever (1935-2006) was the author of over a dozen books, including biographies of Louis XV, Isadora Duncan, and the Marquis de Sade (published in the USA in 1993).
Susan Emanuel has worked as a translator for fifteen years and has translated many articles and books in history, theology, and social sciences. She lives in Burgundy, France and outside Boston with her husband, a scientist, and their son.
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