Justin Ide/Harvard News Office

Biography

Robert Darnton was educated at Harvard University (A.B., 1960) and Oxford University (B.Phil., 1962; D.Phil., 1964), where he was a Rhodes Scholar. After a brief stint as a reporter for The New York Times, he became a Junior Fellow in the Society of Fellows at Harvard.  He taught at Princeton from 1968 until 2007, when he became Carl H. Pforzheimer University Professor and Director of the University Library at Harvard.  He has been a visiting professor or fellow at many universities and institutes for advanced study, and his outside activities include service as a trustee of the New York Public Library and the Oxford University Press (USA). He has written and edited two dozen books, including The Business of Enlightenment: A Publishing History of the Encyclopédie (1979, an early attempt to develop the history of books as a field of study), The Great Cat Massacre and Other Episodes in French Cultural History (1984, probably his most popular work, which has been translated into 16 languages), Berlin Journal, 1989-1990 (1991, an account of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of East Germany), and The Forbidden Best-Sellers of Prerevolutionary France (1995, a study of the underground book trade). His latest book, Slander. The Art and Politics of Libel in Eighteenth-Century France should be published in the winter of 2007-08.

Contact Info

Robinson Hall

Room 212

35 Quincy Street

Cambridge, MA 02138

robert_darnton@harvard.edu

617-495-3551

Harvard University Libraries

Curriculum Vitae