L. Brockliss, From Provincial savant to Parisian naturalist: the recollections of Pierre-Joseph Amoreux (1741-1824)
From Provincial savant to Parisian naturalist: the recollections of Pierre-Joseph Amoreux (1741-1824)
Laurence Brockliss
Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment 2017:10
ISBN 978-0-7294-1203-2, xx+435 pages, £78.00
Pierre-Joseph Amoreux of Montpellier was a Linnaean naturalist, agronomist and bibliographer whose adult life spanned the last decades of the ancien régime, the French Revolution, the age of Napoleon and the Restoration. Thanks to his many publications and contacts, he was a well-known figure in his own day, not just in the Midi but in Paris and beyond. His autobiography, published here for the first time along with a substantial introduction, provides the fullest first-person account of the life of a provincial man of science during this tumultuous period of France’s history.
Before the French Revolution, Amoreux used his Montpellier base and the new prize-essay contest to become a renowned and respected figure in the multi-centred Republic of Letters. Post-Revolution, when French science became exclusively centred on Paris, he succeeded in relaunching his scientific career through frequent visits to the capital where he cultivated the leading lights of the Institut and the Jardin des plantes. Laurence Brockliss opens this volume by providing an in-depth analysis of the context of Amoreux’s life and work, based on his surviving letters, printed and manuscript books and articles, and his autobiographical Souvenirs. Amoreux emerges as a driven, often ruthless, man of science, wealthy enough to devote the majority of his life to his intellectual pursuits, keen to retain his independence, and more interested in worldly success than he pretended.
The following fully annotated transcription of Amoreux’s Souvenirs provides an unparalleled insight into the world of the minor intellectual in the Age of Enlightenment and Revolution, where success or failure could turn on the whims of publishing fashion and the vagaries of the postal service. The Souvenirs also offer novel access to the vibrant underbelly of intellectual life in early nineteenth-century Paris as Amoreux introduces us to a little-known world of libraries, museums, booksellers, collectors, nurserymen and dealers.
Preface
List of abbreviations
Abbreviations used by Amoreux
Note on conventions
Introduction: the Republic of Letters and the French Revolution
I. The life and work of Pierre-Joseph Amoreux
1. The autobiography
2. Family
3. The republican of letters
4. The correspondent
5. The prize-essayist
6. The Paris tourist
7. The published author
8. The collector
9. The man and his achievement
10. Concluding remarks
II. Pierre-Joseph Amoreux: Mes souvenirs
Préambule
Enfance et jeunesse, 1741-1759
Etudiant en médecine, 1759-1762
Prbrière visite à Paris, 1764-1766
Médecin contrecarré, 1766-1767
Républicain des lettres, 1768-1789
Les années révolutionnaires, 1789-1800
Deuxième visite à Paris, 1800
Troisième visite à Paris, 1801
Chez lui, 1801-1803
Quatrième visite à Paris, 1803
Chez lui: travaux littéraires, 1803-1806
Cinquième visite à Paris, 1806
Chez lui: travaux littéraires et affaires domestiques, 1806-1814
Souvenirs et réflexions morales
Chez lui: travaux littéraires et affaires domestiques et nationales, 1814-1816
Sixième visite à Paris, 1816
Chez lui: travaux littéraires et affaires domestiques, 1816-1818
Septième visite à Paris, 1818
Chez lui: travaux littéraires et affaires domestiques, 1818-1821
Huitième visite à Paris, 1821
Dernières années, 1821-1824
Select bibliography
Index of persons
General index
Parution de la Voltaire Foundation, dans la collection des Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment.
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