Georges Lefebvre (French: [ʒɔʁʒ ləfɛvʁ]; 6 August 1874 – 28 August 1959) was a French historian, best known for his work on the French Revolution and peasant life. He is considered one of the pioneers of “history from below”. He coined the phrase the “death certificate of the old order” to describe the Great Fear of 1789. Among his most significant works was the 1924 book Les Paysans du Nord pendant la Révolution française (“The Peasants of the North During the French Revolution”), which was the result of 20 years of research into the role of the peasantry during the revolutionary period.
Books in order of publication (In English & French):
Les Paysans du Nord pendant la Révolution Française (1924)
La Grande Pure de 1789 (1932), translated by Joan White as The Great Fear of 1789: Rural Panic in Revolutionary France (Pantheon, 1973).
Les Thermidoriens (1937).
Le Directoire (1946).
The Thermidorians and the Directory: Two Phases of the French Revolution, translated by Robert Baldick (Random House, 1964).
Quatre-vingt-neuf (1939) (published under the auspices of the Institute for the History of the French Revolution, University of Paris, in conjunction with the National Committee for the Celebration of the 150th Anniversary of the French Revolution), translated by R. R. Palmer as The Coming of the French Revolution (Princeton University Press, 1947; bicentennial edition, 1989).
Napoléon (1935); Volume I translated by Henry F. Stockhold as Napoleon: From 18 Brumaire to Tilsit, 1799-1807 and Volume II translated by J. E. Anderson as Napoleon: From Tilsit to Waterloo, 1807-1815 (Columbia University Press, 1969); those translations published in one volume as Napoleon (Routledge, 2011).
La Révolution Française (Volume I, 1951), translated by Elizabeth Moss Evanson as The French Revolution: From Its Origins to 1793 (Columbia University Press, 1962).
La Révolution Française (Volume II, 1957), translated by John Hall Stewart and James Friguglietti as The French Revolution: From 1793 to 1799 (Columbia University Press, 1964).
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