Arlette Farge is known for her ability to evoke the everyday world of 18th-century France. In The Allure of the Archives, originally published in 1989 and now translated for the first time into English, she pulls the curtain aside and shares what it is like to work with the raw materials on which her writing is based.
The Allure of the Archives elegantly combines elements of memoir and how-to-manual with musings on the craft of history writing. Farge moves effortlessly from the physical realities of working in the archives ("Whether it's summer or winter, you freeze") to the excitement of discovering a 200-year-old pouch of seeds attached to a letter as evidence to the philosophical challenges of constructing meaning from recorded fragments. She shares the feeling of dust-stained fingers, the exhaustion of copying and the frustration of deciphering illegible texts. Abstract questions of historiography and practical discussions of how to organize archival research are lightened by often humorous vignettes of Farge's experiences working in the judicial Archives of the Bastille--from plotting to get the best seat in the reading room to navigating French bureaucratic mazes.
In less talented hands, this material would be no more than an academic work, interesting only to other academics. In fact, The Allure of the Archives is lyrical, suspenseful and humorous in turn. Farge has created a fascinating account of how historians work that will appeal to scholars and history buffs alike. --Pamela Toler, blogging at History in the Margins