Bancroft Library Celebrates Bastille Day

by Randal Brandt (Head of Cataloging)

Acquired via a recent transfer from the Main Library stacks is a complete set of the “Collection des mémoires rélatifs à la Révolution française.” Compiled and edited by St.-Albin Berville and François Berrière and published by Baudouin frères in Paris, 1820-1827, these 53 volumes provide first-hand accounts of the French Revolution by members of the aristocracy whose lives were upended by the events of 1789-1799. Among the memoirs in the set are recollections of the life of Marie-Antoinette written her lady-in-waiting Jeanne-Louise-Henriette Campan, accounts of Louis XVI’s flight to Varennes in 1791, and eyewitness testimony of the storming of the Bastille on July 14, 1789.

The set was originally from the personal library of Professor H. Morse Stephens (1857-1919), who was instrumental in the acquisition of the Bancroft Library by the University of California (and for whom Stephens Hall is named), and many of the volumes still bear his bookplate.

Goguelat + map

Title page and map from http://oskicat.berkeley.edu/record=b13809670~S6

All volumes in set are cataloged in OskiCat