book experts needed

Histoire générale du IVe siècle à nos jours, avec Alfred Rambaud, 12 vol
Ive tried searching about with both Lavisse and Rambaud without much luck, unfortunately. It seems some volumes are in great demand, in French even..you know...for what thats worth to you.

Ive also looked about for Sorel's but, cant seem to get a grip on that one either.

You've got some good ones there, hope someone can help you out...Ive given it my all for the moment.

I suggest asking a librarian at a college/university. Or, a professor of french history if one is accessible to you. Even if your library (I'm assuming you are a post-secondary student) doesn't have such a book, your librarian could probably track it down (if it exists) and could borrow it from whichever institution has the text. That is the one of the things libraries do, they borrow from one another, helps cut down on costs. I just hope you aren't on a deadline because borrowing can take time.

Thanks for all of your help, but this was a last resort for me. I'm a grad student at Clemson and I've already tried interlibrary loan searches and have consulted all the local experts. This is for thesis research in the changing image of Napoleon throughout French history. I have been able to obtain a number of good sources in English, including Las Cases's Memorial de Sainte Helene and Adolphe Thiers's multi-volume History of the Consulate and Empire, but sources for the early Third Republic are hard to find in English. There are some English translations of works by Sorel and Lavisse, just not the ones I need, unfortunately. Thanks again, I'll have to work something else out.

Time to learn Francais, peut etre?

MA or PhD? Hey, I had to learn a bit of Hungarian for my thesis. You gotta do what you gotta do. French is not that difficult for you English-speakers. Many things are the same. If you try hard, in half a year you can be reading those texts in original. If it's worth the trouble. At least it's sexy - it's an asset for your future life, even if the thesis is a complete failure. My thesis has to be simply spledid, for Hungarian is not quite as sexy...

MA in History. And it's due in March, so I won't even have time to learn French for now....

Just a thought - any possibilty of contacting a French professor at Clemson to inquire if any of the students would be available for translation? Also, in Boston we have a French Library (you may have already contacted them). Maybe someone at Clemson could tell you whether or not SC has something similar so you could inquire about translated books or translation services.

Here's the link to the one here.

http://frenchlib.org/index.cfm

A phone call to them might be able to direct you to other works or translations of these, if there are any.

Project Gutenberg has a (free) online edition of A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1., by Carlton J. H. Hayes
on the web HERE.

Since you are looking for older authors on Napoleon, the bibliography at the end there might be some help - although you wont find the asked for books in English, as far as I noticed :wink:

As far as could check various French history bibliographies, neither Sorel nor Lavisse have been translated into English

Yikes, Walter. My sister had to learn German to get her PhD in Anthropology.

Wow! lorenz. We have red tides here in Florida and you certainly have a problem at Clemson. Good luck!

Clemson does have the entire Lavisse set in its library, but it's in French. The French history professor (my thesis committee head) has said he'd take a look at it for me, and I might be able to run some it through translation software, but I also found a four-volume english translation of another good French historian, P. Lanfrey. , who wrote around the late Second Empire/early Third Republic period, and I already own Frederic Masson's Napoleon at St. Helena. Masson is somewhat of a popular expert of sorts on Napoleon, sort of in the same way that Shirer and Toland are Hitler "experts," but I kind of wanted to get some official university contributions as well. Thanks for the help.

Well, lorenz3, good luck for your further writing! (I think, you really must have nerves to write about this period without knowing the language :wink: - you must/should know some French, when studying history in Germany [and it was helpful, indeed, during my time at university].)