Louis XVI

The Life of Louis XVI (2016)

French Monarchs Series - Candidate for Addition


By John Hardman (1944-  )


Former Lecturer in Modern History, University of Edinburgh 1969-83

Senior Research Fellow, Sussex University 2000-2004

This book was published by Yale in 2016.


Another rare French monarchs biography in English of the quality of an English Monarchs book. This Yale title is only the fourth by an English Monarchs publisher and the most recent. Again, this is what a Yale entry in a French Monarchs series would look like.


Hardman has not just revised his 1992 Yale biography of Louis XVI but re-written it to create this splendid new volume. It uses new scholarship of the past two decades to portray a new vision of this king. If that wasn’t enough, Hardman also wrote a Yale biography of Louis' queen, Marie Antoinette, portraying her not as a lightweight but as a woman of substance. 'Marie-Antoinette: The Making of a French Queen' ISBN 9780300243086 was published by Yale in 2019.  


And so ends our brief trip (sojourn?) through the French kings. Not even Louis XIV gets a volume in the Methuen/Yale world, unless you include the 1928 C.S. Forester book for Methuen but that might be just a little too early! We will have to hang on to the Vincent Cronin Louis XIV biography from 1965 for a while longer.


This page and the six French monarchs that preceded are something of an Easter egg on this website. They are not linked elsewhere, but it is an appropriate addition to this survey of Methuen, University of California and Yale’s English Monarchs series. Consider the pages for these French kings a sort of bibliographic billabong.



Continue forward in time for further reading on two Revolting individuals - and beyond - or go to George III to resume the journey of contemporary English Monarchs titles.



Buy Louis XVI from Amazon

or ABE

ISBN data:

Paperback - 9780300220421


Go to the book's webpage at Yale.


Yale Hardback 2016

Welcome to the detour looking at a "French Monarchs" series