Robert Darnton

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Robert Darnton (born May 10, 1939) is an American cultural historian, recognized as a leading expert on eighteenth century France.

He graduated from Harvard University in 1960, attended Oxford University on a Rhodes scholarship, and earned a Ph.D. (D. Phil.) in history from Oxford in 1964, where he studied with Richard Cobb, among others. He worked as reporter at The New York Times from 1964 to 1965. He was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship in 1982, and was President of the American Historical Association in 1999. He joined the Princeton University faculty in 1968, and was Shelby Cullom Davis Professor of European History. On July 1, 2007, he transferred to emeritus status at Princeton, and was appointed Carl H. Pforzheimer University Professor and director of the Harvard University Library, ^[1]

Darnton is a pioneer in the growing field of the history of the book. One of his books, The Forbidden Best-Sellers of Pre-Revolutionary France (New York: W.W. Norton, 1996), won the National Book Critics Circle Award for criticism in 1995. He currently is writing about electronic publishing. He is founder of the Gutenberg-e program, sponsored by Mellon Foundation.

In 1999 he was named a Chevalier of the Légion d’Honneur, the highest award given by the French government, in recognition of his work. In 2004 he was awarded the Gutenberg prize by the International Gutenberg Society, and in 2005 received an award for distinguished achievement from the American Printing History Association ^[2]

He was President of the American Historical Association in 1997-98.