In the 1790s an extraordinary group of friends changed the world. Disappointed by the French Revolution's rapid collapse into tyranny,what they wanted was nothing less than a revolution of the mind. The rulers of Europe had ordered their peoples how to think and act for too long. Based in the small German town of Jena,through poetry,drama,philosophy and science,they transformed the way we think about ourselves and the world around us. They were the first Romantics.
Their way of understanding the world still frames our lives and being.We're still empowered by their daring leap into the self. We still think with their minds,see with their imagination and feel with their emotions. We also still walk the same tightrope between meaningful self-fulfilment and destructive narcissism,between the rights of the individual and our role as a member of our community and our responsibilities towards future generations who will inhabit this planet. This extraordinary group of friends changed our world. It is impossible to imagine our lives,thoughts and understanding without the foundation of their ground-breaking ideas.
Publisher: John Murray PressISBN: 9781529392760Number of pages: 512Weight: 380 gDimensions: 196 x 128 x 36 mm
MEDIA REVIEWS
'Andrea Wulf is that rare historian who makes the past feel present and turns distant lives into gripping stories of the human heart. Magnificent Rebels is a magnificent book: mesmerising,heartbreaking and incredibly timely,it is an important reminder that the desire to be true to oneself transcends time and borders'- Amanda Foreman
'This is a magnificent book,fascinating in its focus and breathtaking in its scope and sweep. It is a work of formidable scholarship worn lightly; of complex intellectual history told evocatively,absorbingly,compellingly. Wulf's superb prose draws us deeply into the lives and minds of this remarkable circle of people,who together explored the breathtaking possibilities - and tremendous risks - of free will,individual creativity and liberty'- Robert Macfarlane
'The Jena Set was a group of philosophers,artists,and thinkers so earthquakingly brilliant that we feel the tremors that their ideas set off under our feet today. Nobody but Andrea Wulf,with her exquisite grasp of ideas and personalities,with her meticulous,sensitive and acutely observed prose,could make the reader feel as if they were in the room with them,bearing personal witness to their insights and their vanities and rages. Her storytelling had me immediately in her thrall'- Lauren Groff
'Truly extraordinary,an intellectual history,group portrait,and elegy to Romanticism,which reads at times like a prizewinning novel. You feel you're there in turn-of-the-nineteenth-century Germany,experiencing the debates,disputations,and deep emotional interconnections between the most profound philosophers and greatest writers of the era,as they grapple with the birth of the modern'- Andrew Roberts
'Thrumming with all the red-hot frenzy,wild passion and radical ideas of a free new world created out of poetry,sex and Romanticism,Magnificent Rebels,Andrea Wulf's superb group biography is elegantly written,deeply researched and totally gripping'- Simon Sebag Montefiore
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