Standard works on the period are provided by Robert Niklaus, “The Eighteenth Century, 1715–1789,” in P.E. Charvet (ed.), A Literary History of France, vol. 4 (1967); and Jean Ehrard et al. (eds.), Le XVIIIe Siècle, 4 vol. (1974–77), available only in French. Ernst Cassirer, The Philosophy of the Enlightenment (1951, reissued 1966; originally published in German, 1932), provides an introduction to the philosophes; as do the lively essays collected in Robert Darnton, The Great Cat Massacre: And Other Episodes in French Cultural History (1984, reissued 2001). Works on the novel include Peter Brooks, The Novel of Worldliness: Crébillon, Marivaux, Laclos, Stendhal (1969); Joan Hinde Stewart, Gynographs: French Novels by Women of the Late Eighteenth Century (1993); and Vivienne Mylne, The Eighteenth-Century French Noveclass="underline" Techniques of Illusion, 2nd ed. (1981). The 19th century From 1800 to 1850
Excellent studies appear in D.G. Charlton (ed.), The French Romantics, 2 vol. (1984); and W.D. Howarth, Sublime and Grotesque: A Study of French Romantic Drama (1975). Useful works on the exchanges of fiction and history include Ceri Crossley, French Historians and Romanticism (1993); György Lukács, The Historical Novel (1962, reissued 1983; originally published in Hungarian, 1947), and Studies in European Realism (1950, reissued 2002); and Hayden V. White, Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe (1973, reissued 1990). From 1850 to 1900
Among the better overviews of the literature are Christopher Robinson, French Literature in the Nineteenth Century (1978); and F.W.J. Hemmings, Culture and Society in France, 1848–1898: Dissidents and Philistines (1971). Genres and movements are examined in G.M. Carsaniga and F.W.J. Hemmings (ed.), The Age of Realism (1974, reissued 1978); A.G. Lehmann, The Symbolist Aesthetic in France, 1885–1895, 2nd ed. (1968, reprinted 1977); Anna Balakian, The Symbolist Movement: A Critical Appraisal (1967, reissued 1977); Marvin Carlson, The French Stage in the Nineteenth Century (1972); Jennifer Birkett, The Sins of the Fathers: Decadence in France 1870–1914 (1986); and Richard Griffiths, The Reactionary Revolution: The Catholic Revival in French Literature, 1870–1914 (1966). The 20th century
An overview of the period from 1920 to 1970 can be found in Germaine Brée, Twentieth-Century French Literature, trans. by Louise Guiney (1983). Works on the novel include Henri Peyre, The Contemporary French Novel (1955, reissued 1959); John Sturrock, The French New Noveclass="underline" Claude Simon, Michel Butor, Alain Robbe-Grillet (1969); Celia Britton, The Nouveau Roman: Fiction, Theory, Politics (1992); Edmund J. Smyth (ed.), Postmodernism and Contemporary Fiction (1991); Margaret Atack and Phil Powrie (eds.), Contemporary French Fiction by Women: Feminist Perspectives (1990); and Eva Martin Sartori and Dorothy Wynne Zimmerman (eds.), French Women Writers: A Bio-Bibliographical Source Book (1991). Among works on the theatre are Martin Esslin, The Theatre of the Absurd, 3rd ed., rev. and enlarged (1980, reissued 2001); and David Bradby, Modern French Drama, 1940–1990, 2nd ed. (1991). Poetry studies include Marcel Raymond, From Baudelaire to Surrealism (1970; originally published in French, 1933); Peter Broome and Graham Chesters, An Anthology of Modern French Poetry, 1850–1950 (1976); Michael Bishop, The Contemporary Poetry of France: Eight Studies (1985); and Martin Sorrell (ed.), Modern French Poetry: A Bilingual Anthology Covering Seventy Years (1992), and Elles: A Bilingual Anthology of Modern French Poetry by Women (1995). Christopher Robinson, Scandal in the Ink: Male and Female Homosexuality in Twentieth-Century French Literature (1995), is an excellent study.