Books breed books; many helped breed this one. Beside Furbank’s biography I used Arthur M. Wilson’s formidable and two-volume Diderot (New York, 1972), Lester G. Crocker’s Diderot: The Embattled Philosopher (New York/London, 1966), John Hope Mason’s The Irresistible Diderot (London, 1982), J. Proust’s Diderot et l’Encyclopédie (Paris, 1962), Peter France (ed.), Diderot’s Letters to Sophie Volland: A Selection (London, 1972), Paul Verniere (ed.), Diderot: Memoires pour Catherine II (Paris, 1966), and Maurice Tourneaux, Diderot et Catherine II (rep. Geneva, 1970). I used Simon Schama’s wonderful Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution (London, 1989), Robert Darnton’s The Business of Enlightenment: A Publishing History of the Encyclopédie (Cambridge/London, 1979), Carl Becker’s The Heavenly City of the 18th Century Philosophers (New Haven, 1932), and Durand Eccheveria’s Mirage in the West: A History of the French Image of American Society (Princeton, 1956). Like everyone in the field, I drew on Theodore Besterman’s Voltaire (London, 1969), as well as A. Lentin (ed.), Voltaire and Catherine the Great: Selected Correspondence (Cambridge, 1974). Among the many studies of Jefferson, I am especially grateful to William Howard Adams’ The Paris Years of Thomas Jefferson (New Haven, 1997) and Conor Cruise O’Brien’s provocative The Long Affair: Thomas Jefferson and the French Revolution (London, 1996).
I also used A. G. Cross’s Russia and the West in the Eighteenth Century (Newtonville, Mass., 1983), Katherine Anthony (tr.), Memoirs of Catherine the Great (New York, 1927), Dominique Maroger (ed.), The Memoirs of Catherine the Great (London, 1955), Kyril Fitzlyon (tr.), The Memoirs of Princess Dashkov (London, 1958), Henri Troyat, Catherine the Great (London, 1981), John Alexander, Catherine the Great: Life and Legend (New York, 1989), Montgomery Hyde, The Empress Catherine and Princess Dashkov (London, 1935), Vincent Cronin, Catherine, Empress of All the Russias (London, 1978), and Carolly Erickson, Great Catherine (London, 1998). I gained much from Boris Otmetev and John Stuart, Saint Petersburg: Portrait of an Imperial City (London, 1990), Solomon Volkov’s delightful St. Petersburg: A Cultural History (London, 1996), Lawrence Kelly’s St Petersburg: A Travellers’ Companion (London, 1981), and Geraldine Norman’s terrific The Hermitage: The Biography of a Great Museum (London, 1997).
I was greatly helped by David Remnick’s two panoramic studies of Russia in the 1990s: Lenin’s Tomb: The Last Days of the Soviet Empire (London, 1994) and Resurrection: The Struggle for a New Russia (London, 1999). I am very grateful for John Wells’s brilliant translation of Beaumarchais’ The Figaro Plays (London, 1977), as well as to Cynthia Cox’s The Real Figaro: The Extraordinary Career of Caron de Beaumarchais (London, 1962) and F. Grendel’s Beaumarchais: The Man Who Was Figaro (London, 1977). I cheated with Eugene Onegin; my references are not to any libretto but to James Falen’s translation of the poem (Oxford World’s Classics, 1995). I cheated too over the reburial of Laurence Sterne. A more truthful version (giving the fine sermon of Canon Cant) may be found in Arthur H. Cash and John M. Stedmond (eds.), The Winged Skull: Bicentenary Conference Papers on Lawrence Sterne (London, 1971). I am much indebted to the late Kenneth Monkman, the restorer of Shandy Hall, and Jacques Berthoud, Tony Cross, Edward Acton, Jon Cook, Breon Mitchell, and Douglas R. Hofstadter, all of whom gave friendly help. One more debt. At Indiana University, Bloomington, in 1997, as I was working on this, I saw John Corigliano and William H. Hoffman’s splendid opera bouffe The Ghosts of Versailles, brilliantly performed by the Music School: another great stimulus . . .