Complete and unabridged, with 58 full-page plates by Robert Lefèvre, Pierre-Paul Prud'hon and Joseph-Siffred Duplessis. France from the first kings to the Third Republic in short numbered paragraphs, written for the schoolroom by a novelist who had read the chronicles. Charlotte Yonge wrote histories of England and France for pupils who would go on to the sources, and kept the narrative moving at the price of nuance. It is a period document twice over: about France, and about how the Victorians taught it. Fifty-eight plates after David, Gros and their contemporaries turn the story into a painted record of France from the old monarchy to the barricades.