“What are the best books about The French Revolution?” We looked at 86 of the top French Revolution books, aggregating and ranking them so we could answer that very question!

The 86 best books about the French Revolution are split between fiction and nonfiction titles. The top 9 books, all appearing on 2 or more lists, are below with images, summaries, and additional links to learn more. The remaining books, all appearing on a single list, as well as the lists themselves, can be found in alphabetical order at the bottom of the page.

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Top 9 Fiction & Nonfiction French Revolution Books

9 .) Citizens by Simon Schama

Lists It Appears On:

• About
• Five Books

In this New York Times bestseller, award-winning author Simon Schama presents an ebullient country, vital and inventive, infatuated with novelty and technology–a strikingly fresh view of Louis XVI’s France. One of the great landmarks of modern history publishing

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8 .) City of Darkness, City of Light by Marge Piercy

Lists It Appears On:

• Madame Guillotine
• Jungle Find

For Claire Lacombe and Pauline Leon, two poor women of eighteenth-century France, the lofty ideals of the coming revolution could not seem more abstract. But when Claire sees the gaping disparity between the poverty she has known and the lavish lives of aristocrats as her theater group performs in their homes, and Pauline witnesses the execution of local bread riot leaders, both are driven to join the uprising. They, along with upper-class women like Madame Manon Roland, who ghostwrites speeches for her politician husband and runs a Parisian salon where revolutionaries gather, will play critical roles in the French people’s bloody battle for liberty and equality.

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7 .) Fatal Purity – Robespierre and the French Revolution by Ruth Scurr

Lists It Appears On:

• Kate’s Blog
• About

“Since his execution by guillotine in July 1794, Maximilien Robespierre has been contested terrain for historians. Was he a bloodthirsty charlatan or the only true defender of revolutionary ideals? The first modern dictator or the earliest democrat? Was his extreme moralism a heroic virtue or a ruinous flaw?

Against the dramatic backdrop of the French Revolution, historian Ruth Scurr tracks Robespierre’s evolution from provincial lawyer to devastatingly efficient revolutionary leader, righteous and paranoid in equal measure. She explores his reformist zeal, his role in the fall of the monarchy, his passionate attempts to design a modern republic, even his extraordinary effort to found a perfect religion. And she follows him into the Terror, as the former death- penalty opponent makes summary execution the order of the day, himself falling victim to the violence at the age of thirty-six.”

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6 .) Scaramouche by Rafael Sabatini

Lists It Appears On:

• The Guardian
• Jungle Find

Set during the French Revolution, the tale of the man “who was born with a gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad.” This classic novel of swashbuckling adventure and sweeping romance is also a thought-provoking commentary on class, inequality, and the individual’s role in society―a story that has become Rafael Sabatini’s enduring legacy.

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5 .) The Glass Blowers by Daphne du Maurier

Lists It Appears On:

• Kate’s Blog
• The Guardian

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4 .) The Way to the Lantern by Audrey Erskine Lindop

Lists It Appears On:

• Madame Guillotine
• Jungle Find

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3 .) The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Emma Orczy

Lists It Appears On:

• Madame Guillotine
• Flavorwire
• The Guardian
• Jungle Find

In this historical adventure set during the French Revolution, the elusive Scarlet Pimpernel sets out to rescue men, women and children facing the horrors of the guillotine, while evading the relentless pursuit of his arch enemy, Chauvelin.

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2 .) A Place of Greater Safety by Hilary Mantel

Lists It Appears On:

• Madame Guillotine
• Jungle Find
• Kate’s Blog
• Flavorwire
• The Guardian

It is 1789, and three young provincials have come to Paris to make their way. Georges-Jacques Danton, an ambitious young lawyer, is energetic, pragmatic, debt-ridden–and hugely but erotically ugly. Maximilien Robespierre, also a lawyer, is slight, diligent, and terrified of violence. His dearest friend, Camille Desmoulins, is a conspirator and pamphleteer of genius. A charming gadfly, erratic and untrustworthy, bisexual and beautiful, Camille is obsessed by one woman and engaged to marry another, her daughter. In the swells of revolution, they each taste the addictive delights of power, and the price that must be paid for it.

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1 .) A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens

Lists It Appears On:

• Madame Guillotine
• Jungle Find
• Kate’s Blog
• Flavorwire
• The Guardian

A TALE OF TWO CITIES (1859) is a novel by Charles Dickens, set in London and Paris before and during the French Revolution. The novel depicts the plight of the French peasantry demoralized by the French aristocracy in the years leading up to the revolution, the corresponding brutality demonstrated by the revolutionaries toward the former aristocrats in the early years of the revolution, and many unflattering social parallels with life in London during the same period. It follows the lives of several characters through these events. A Tale of Two Cities was published in weekly installments from April 1859 to November 1859 in Dickens’s new literary periodical titled All the Year Round. All but three of Dickens’s previous novels had appeared only as monthly installments. With sales of about 200 million copies, A Tale of Two Cities is the bestselling novel in history.

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The #10-86 Additional Books About The French Revolution

10 Best French Revolution Book Sources/Lists