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Description of  The Last Libertines

An enthralling work of history about the Libertine generation that came up duringand was eventually destroyed bythe French Revolution. The Last Libertines, as Benedetta Craveri writes in her preface to the book, is the story of a group of seven aristocrats whose youth coincided with the French monarchys final moment of gracea moment when it seemed to the nations elite that a style of life based on privilege and the spirit of caste might acknowledge the widespread demand for change, and in doing so reconcile itself with Enlightenment ideals of justice, tolerance, and citizenship. Here we meet seven emblematic characters, whom Craveri has singled out not only for the romantic character of their exploits and amoursbut also by the keenness with which they experienced this crisis in the civilization of the ancien rgime, of which they themselves were the emblem. Displaying the aristocratic virtues of dignity, courage, refinement of manners, culture, [and] wit, the Duc de Lauzun, the Vicomte de Sgur, the Duc de Brissac, the Comte de Narbonne, the Chevalier de Boufflers, the Comte de Sgur, and the Comte de Vaudreuil were at the same time irreducible individualists and true sons of the Enlightenment, all of them ambitious to play their part in bringing around the great changes that were in the air. When the French Revolution came, however, they found themselves condemned to poverty, exile, and in some cases execution. Telling the parallel lives of these seven dazzling but little-remembered historical figures, Craveri brings the past to life, powerfully dramatizing a turbulent time that was at once the last act of a now-vanished world and the first act of our own.